Posted on 02/27/2006 8:57:03 AM PST by devane617
MEXICO CITY - ''The wall'' does not yet exist, and it might never be built, but already its 700 miles of fencing and electric sensors loom like a new Berlin Wall in the Latin American imagination.
The proposed barrier along the Mexican border was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives in December and is scheduled to be debated by the Senate next month. In Spanish, they call it el muro.
El muro has been a focus of news for weeks not only in countries such as Mexico and El Salvador that are increasingly dependent on the dollars migrants send back home, but also faraway Argentina and Chile. Across the region, el muro is seen as an ominous new symbol of America's unchecked power.
''The U.S. government has fostered an atmosphere of collective paranoia, given a green light to its spies . . . and institutionalized torture,'' Salvadoran novelist Horacio Castellanos Moya said. ``The only thing missing was a wall.''
The brainchild of Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., H.R. 4437 envisions two ''layers of reinforced fencing,'' new lighting, cameras and underground sensors similar to those in place near San Ysidro. One new stretch would seal off nearly all of the 350-mile length of the Arizona-Mexico border.
The beefed-up barrier aims to bring order to the chaos caused by an estimated 1 million people crossing illegally each year.
The bill also elevates illegal crossing from a misdemeanor to a felony and includes new provisions to limit hiring of undocumented workers.
The House approved the bill by a vote of 239-182.
In the lands south of the proposed barrier, news of the vote has been greeted with expressions of confusion, sadness and official concern. On Monday, the foreign ministers of 11 Latin American countries meeting in Colombia agreed to formulate a plan to lobby the U.S. Senate to kill the plan.
Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein, whose center-right government is close to the Bush administration, made an unusually strident statement against the bill last month.
''It seems to us a real affront that a government that calls itself a friend and regional partner only wants our money and our products . . . treats our people as if they were a plague,'' Stein said.
Only a minority of commentators have suggested that Latin American governments share at least some of the blame for the disorder on the U.S. frontier.
''The diatribes (against the wall) are a poor substitute for adequate policies,'' Sergio Aguayo Quezada wrote in the Mexico City newspaper Reforma. ``The long era of open borders is over, and the escape value is slowly closing.''
Others point out that the walls already in place for more than a decade in Tijuana; El Paso, Texas; and other border communities have driven illegal crossers into the Sonora Desert, where hundreds have died of exhaustion.
Fearing that more fences will result in more deaths, Archbishop Renato Asencio León led a prayer Mass in Ciudad Juárez against the proposal. ''We pray to the Lord that this wall not be raised,'' the archbishop said.
The president of Mexico's National Commission for Human Rights, Jose Luis Soberanes, called the proposal an act of ``idiocy.''
The Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre took a sounding of the country's artists and athletes, who unanimously condemned the fence.
''It's one more slap in the face from the gringos, an example of their cynicism,'' actress Patricia Orantes told the newspaper. ``The walls are falling now. Berlin's fell, and [the Americans] still haven't learned yet.''
Bristling over repeated comparisons across Latin America between the Sensenbrenner fence and the wall built by East German Communist leaders, U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza responded with an angry letter last month.
''Comparisons of proposals to alter our border policies to the Berlin Wall are not only disingenuous and intellectually dishonest, they are personally offensive to me,'' Garza wrote in a release issued by the U.S. Embassy here. ``The Berlin Wall was built to keep its own people trapped inside, and was created by an oppressive authoritarian government.''
The United States, Garza wrote, has an inherent right to defend its security.
?
Didn't I read a recent article about an illegal going back into Mexico who got across the border quite legally and was immediately shot by the Mexicans themselves?
Good fences make good neighbors...
susie
If they don't like it, let them get the F out.
I'm pretty unconcerned about the cost of the wall. 2-3 billion is a bargain at any price. However, I want auditors attached to the checks, but like in Katrina, I'm sure they won't be. Whatever, as long as we get the wall.
I was referring to your post #8, where you coded your answer with certain letters.
Unless those letters stand for something other than how I interpreted them.......
Have you ever heard of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)? It is welfare disguised as a tax refund. Making the EITC larger is what the Democrats are talking about when they talk about a tax cut for the poor. Low wage earners get back MORE money in their refund check then was ever withheld from their paychecks. 9 out of 10 Mexicans would qualify. We would not be taxing them; they would be taxing us.
And don't count on being able to reverse that situation either. Don't forget that there would be 100 million new Democrat voters and that Mexicans would control at least a quarter of Congress, probably a good chunk of the Senate and would be the decisive vote on which Democrat in the Presidential primaries got to be President. The Republicans could juet forget about ever winning a national election again.
And then their would be the bilingual requirements ala Canada ...
We don't want any part of that corrupt third world hellhole.
treats our people as if they were a plague,'' Stein said
If the people coming here illegally think we're some kind of cashcow and expect to suck our welfare system dry and on top of that, send the money they make back to their country of origin, it sounds like a plague to me. CACAROACH INFESTATION !
That's all it is...imagination...fureld by the left, the liberals, the socialists, the communists and every other enemy of America.
The ignorant may get riled up...and the enemies may get riled up, but the fact is there is all the difference in the world between our border security and the Berlin Wall or the Iron Curtain. In those instance communists tyrants built their walls to keep their own people IN. We would be establishing our security so to keep illegal aliens OUT of our free, law-abiding country, while allowing all legal immigrants to come to our free shores through the normal, legal channels.
All the difference in the world.
Proof positive that walls work and work fine. Too bad about the dummies who croaked themselves in the desert but even walls can't stop stupidity.
The wall should persuade other countries in the hemisphere that they need to put their houses in order, so to speak, and stop exporting unhappy citizens. As long as the US is a safety valve or dumping ground, they have no incentive to change. The administration should be smart enough to figure this out. It's not rocket science.
And have half the fine going PERSONALLY to the officer(s) making the bust.
Within 3 months, there will be no employed illegal anywhere in the US.
Well, I was being a little facitious of course, but I should be careful what I joke about. The Dims might overhear and get ideas.
I am aware of this credit, it is especially helpful to people who earn less than a years worth of wages. I know one young lady who makes it a point not to earn over the limit, she gets a $2000+ refund (way more than the paltry amount she pays). She calls it her "furniture" money.
If everyone were honest, hard working individuals, this would be justified and I would happily pay. There are many single mothers at work who qualify but for those that work the system, this is a wonderful plus they can use.
I suppose I am OK with the EITC used for wage earners with children but very against the EITC for wage earners without children we also now have, also I would of course require they are American citizens and would have worked the entire year without any breaks in work time.
Google the name Hector Tobar. He is a proponent of radical Latino causes.
''The U.S. government has fostered an atmosphere of collective paranoia, given a green light to its spies . . . and institutionalized torture,'' Salvadoran novelist Horacio Castellanos Moya said. ``The only thing missing was a wall.''
Then why do so many Latin Americans want to come to the U.S., if we are so terrible, hmmmmmm? If we are into torture, wouldn't they want a wall to separate us (the barbarians) from them (the great humanitarians). I would think they'd be delighted with a wall, rather than scrambling to get into our country before we actually do build it and slam the illegal alien door shut. So much to ponder.
Thirty-one million dollars per mile for the border fence? Someone's been getting ahold of that hallucinogen the Supreme Court said an obscure church has a right to trip on.
Seriously, if we go with classic lowest bidder combined with border-hoppers forced to perform construction this would come in WAY under these grossly inflated cost estimates. My way has the added disincentive value of those lining up on the other side seeing the hard labor being done by those who preceded them.
The only problem we have with border enforcement is citizens interfering with it...bad business-people needing neoslaves to compete with the law-abiding should be allowed to fail instead of getting a bye from strategic political contributions (at the expense of the honestly successful).
It's all about corruption. Are we going to clean up our act and resume our place as the world's role model or are we going to "get along to go along" into a stagnate backwater of our own making?
It's "go along to get along", and the right word was "stagnant". Hey, my dyslexic parents named me Mikel. I'm fighting a genetic tendacitynous.
That's not for the fence - it's to build the roads for the NAFTA corridor.
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