Mexico buckles.     If you do like open borders, then you must love the Obama administration, which has been waving through illegals as fast as it can while it still can.

The Center for Immigration Studies, working from Census Bureau numbers, estimates that for the two years 2014-2015, illegal immigration was running around 550,000 a year, inclusive of both border-jumpers and visa-overstayers. That's nearly a sixty percent increase over the previous two years, 2012-2013, which itself was an increase over 2010-2011.

So over a million people are now settling illegally in our country every couple of years. You might think that this would mean that the eleven million number you've been hearing from the mainstream media for as long as you can remember is badly out of date. You might then pause for a moment to reflect on what Obama-hugging liars the mainstream media are, and how sloppy their journalistic standards have gotten.

Legal immigration is likewise surging. For those last three two-year periods the numbers are, in millions: 1.4, 1.6, and 2.0. Money quote from the CIS report, quote:

The latest Census Bureau data shows that the scale of new immigration is clearly enormous. The numbers raise profound questions about assimilation and the impact of immigration on the nation's education system, infrastructure, and labor market, as well as the size and density of the U.S. population. It is difficult to find a public policy that has a more profound impact across American society than the level of immigration. It is certainly appropriate that immigration should be at the center of the current presidential election.

We're not talking about Mexicans, either. The biggest sending regions for immigrants overall in 2014-2015 were East and South Asia at 36 percent and Other Latin America — other than Mexico, that is — at 28 percent.

What does "Other Latin America" actually encompass? Well, here's a story from Reuters, June 10th. Headline: 'At the limit,' Mexico buckles under migrant surge to U.S..

Say what? Why is Mexico buckling?

Well, because illegal immigration across our southern border has come to resemble illegal immigration across the Mediterranean and up into northern Europe. There are, in the European case:

• Receiving countries, the prosperous welfare democracies of northern Europe;
• Sending countries: the poor, corrupt gangster-despotisms of Africa and the Middle East;

and there are

• Pass-through countries like Greece, Italy, and the Balkan states of former Yugoslavia.

Illegals don't want to settle in a pass-through country. Those countries are only a degree more prosperous and less corrupt than the sinkholes that the illegals are escaping from. There's not much work to be found and only minimal welfare.

For the illegals, a pass-through country is just a stepping-stone to the real prize destination further from the equator. (It's always further from the equator, for reasons explained by Michael Hart in his book Understanding Human History.)

Well, Mexico is transitioning into a pass-through country. Back to that Reuters story.

Illegals from Central America — mainly from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — cross Mexico to get to the U.S.A. After the big surge from those countries two years ago, when even the Obama people started to worry about rising opposition among the American public, the administration leaned on Mexico to arrest and return Central American illegals.

Mexico duly did so, catching 190,000 last year. This year, though, detentions in Mexico are way down; yet numbers coming across our southern border are way up.

What's going on? The Reuters reports identifies a host of factors. The oil price collapse has hurt Mexican government revenues, so they have less to spend on their enforcement agencies. The people smugglers have thought up new tricks in the arms race against enforcement … and so on.

Then there are push and pull factors. There's been drought in Central America, making for a push factor. On the pull side there is of course the prospect that in November American voters may bring in an administration that gives a damn about defending our borders. There was also a recent U.S. court decision limiting detention times for illegals.

What's to be done? That depends on who gets elected President in November.

If it's Trump, and he's as good as his word, and true to his inauguration oath, we'll have proper enforcement of immigration laws at last. Problem solved.

If it's Hillary there'll be as little law enforcement as she can get away with. If pressed to reduce the flow, she'll do what the European countries are doing: bribe the sending countries with big fat wads of money — our money, of course, yours and mine.

The Europeans have led the way here. They were paying off Gaddafy when he ran Libya, giving him billions of Euros to stop the people smugglers. Now they've revived that policy, offering 50 million dollars to eight East and Central African countries to stem the flow, and haggling with Niger, a pass-through country for West Africans heading to Libya.

Niger wants a billion Euros, but will settle for less. The Europeans would bribe Libya if they could, but no-one's much in charge there since Mrs Clinton and her friends dispatched Gaddafy.

That's what the civilized world has come to: dickering with despots, crooks and bandits, offering them a cut of our national wealth, of the people's money, rather than doing the unthinkable, the thing that may not be done — may not even be spoken of without a frown of disapproval: enforce the people's laws.