Posted on 09/24/2006 1:07:07 PM PDT by SandRat
Canyons, rivers and shifting sand - plus a multibillion-dollar price tag, more violence and less business - make sealing the border all but impossible
It stretches between two seas and slithers across four states. It climbs mountains, traverses canyons and slices through cities.
Most of it, including long stretches in Arizona, California and New Mexico, is vast and open, marked by wooden posts linked with sagging barbed wire, cement obelisks or nothing at all. In some cities, 10- to 15-foot-tall fences protect it. For 1,254 miles in Texas, it becomes a plodding, chocolate-colored river called the Rio Grande.
The line itself is midfield in the daily duel of brains and brawn between the thousands who cross it illegally and the uniformed men and women who patrol it.
This is the U.S.-Mexican border: a 2,000-mile dividing line at the center of one of the nation's hottest political debates.
Three quarters of Americans think the country should do more to stop illegal immigration. Politicians from California to Capitol Hill are promising a secured border.
The U.S. House of Representatives wants 700 miles of border fencing. The Senate decided last week to consider the same proposal, four months after passing a bill to build 370 miles of fence and nearly 500 miles of vehicle barriers. The president has pledged 6,000 new U.S. Border Patrol agents.
The varied solutions share a common element: They won't stop illegal immigration.
The Star sent a six-member reporting team on a three-week trek from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico this summer to investigate whether the border can be sealed, and what the effects would be. They interviewed more than 200 people who live or work on the border, study it, cross it or patrol it, and experts in economics, politics and migration. They found:
* Jagged mountains, deep canyons and winding rivers preclude a continuous wall.
* Fences and other technology would cost $2 billion to $5 billion or more. And longer wait times to cross would cost border businesses at least $1 billion a year.
* It would take at least 100,000 agents - 10 times today's number - to patrol the border the way San Diego and El Paso agents did when they brought traffic to a trickle in their sectors in the late 1990s.
* Fences, access roads and vehicle traffic would threaten wildlife habitat and biological diversity, perhaps doing more damage than illegal entrants already cause.
Even overcoming all these obstacles won't solve the problem, the Star investigation concluded.
As the border tightens, more illegal entrants will try to sneak through legal entry points, intensifying the already arduous task of finding them among the millions who pass legally. The fact that nearly half of the estimated 12 million people here illegally overstayed visas makes the job even more daunting.
Would-be illegal entrants won't stop, either, finding new ways in and shifting routes to the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. As long as businesses here offer better jobs than those available back home, the engine that drives illegal immigration will churn on.
Pessimistic Prissies on the left.
Sounds like the Leftist girlymen think we should just give up the war on terror and we should all start wearing burqas. Losers. They want to battle the sun in their "war against global warming" but defending our borders is just too tough to do.
I'm for an Israeli-style barrier fence across the border's entire length.
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
*little tiny bleeding heart violin*
*little pinko stomping feet*
- or make that a big bleeding heart orchestra
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
I am for the fence as well.
They can add up all the costs for the fence and it will still be less in the long run than what it will costs when a few Islamofascist cross the border and stage an attack on the U.S.
It will still be less than it cost to arrest/adjudicate/incarcerate illegals for crimes they commit here in the U.S.
It will still be less than the costs of giving illegals benefits (healthcare, welfare, housing, education).
Throw in the other negatives about illegals (uninsured motorist premiums is one) and you can logically conclude that:
WE CANNOT AFFORD THIS OPEN BORDER!!!!!
The idiot provided the solution to his unsolvable problem...no jobs here for illegal aliens.
As I have said over and over. A fence will help a little but the real weapon to use against illegals is state laws to : (1) Enforce Employer fines/imprisonment (2) Enable local law enforcement to arrest, hold, and deport illegals.
Oh yeah, so the solution is to do NOTHING!!!!! Geeez!, sombody pass the duct tape before my head explodes!
Yes, it will cost a little public money and no, the process will not make us popular will certain of our neighbors and many in the international community.
However, within a short period of time even the most uneducated intruder will clearly understand the options he has. Life and the pursuit of misery at home or a consequence which precludes hope if he persists.
I submit that within less than one election cycles, the vast majority will choose home and will contemplate what they can do to improve their domestic conditions. When that happens it should be our societal responsibility to assist these poor souls in determining their own destiny in their own country.
Note carefully it's always framed in an either-or all-or-nothing argument. This is known as the false dilemma in argumentation, and goes back to at least the early Greeks.
I.e. since "we can't stop illegal immigration" the implication is apparently we shouldn't even try. Since "we can't deport 12 million illegals already in the country" we shouldn't deport _any_. And so it goes.
1) Enforce Employer fines/imprisonment (2) Enable local law enforcement to arrest, hold, and deport illegals.
Thats the answer there. Serious penalty for employers giving jobs to illegals. cut ff the reason to come here and they will go away on their own. Big companies have big pull and they want cheap labor so, our security will take a back seat to that I'm afraid .
ping
Most important!(3) Take away all government handouts. Welfare, foodstamps, WIC, public housing, etc.
I wonder how many of them were Dane?
Bttt!
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