The Jeopardy of Reform - Krauthammer says build a fence first

www.townhall.com ^ | June 15, 2007 | Charles Krauthammer

[dennisw]

WASHINGTON -- Comprehensive immigration reform is in jeopardy because it is a complex compromise with too many moving parts and too many competing interests. Employers want a guest worker program; unions want to kill it. Reformers want to introduce a point system that preferentially admits skilled and educated immigrants; immigrant groups naturally want to keep the existing family preference system. Liberals want legalization now; conservatives insist on enforcement "triggers" first.

[Doofer]

Build the darn fence first....

[bytesmith]

Another attractive reason for the high tech surveillance is that the officials can just decide to ignore the crossings and no one outside the system would know it. The situation which exists today would continue and yet congress would be spending billions and we (the outsiders) would be led to believe the border is closed.

[ccmay]

A high wall with a wide gate, that's what I want. But not one more practicing Muslim.

-ccm

[roamer_1]

Hi bytesmith,

Another attractive reason for the high tech surveillance is that the officials can just decide to ignore the crossings and no one outside the system would know it. The situation which exists today would continue and yet congress would be spending billions and we (the outsiders) would be led to believe the border is closed.

Bump that! Not to mention that fences and hi-tech require constant maintenance...

Simply refusing to fund the maintenance and patrols would effectively put the whole kit-and-kaboodle right back to square one in a very few years.

I have always been more in favor of a wall for that reason. Once it is there, big, and bad, it would be much harder to breach, and would require little maintaining.

-Bruce

[A Navy Vet]

"But not one more practicing Muslim."

Sorry, with the increase of "refugees" and "asylumists", you will eventually enjoy the Muslim influence in your neighborhood, much as Michigan has. How lovely those "call to prayers" will sound just blocks or a few miles away will sound.

Be prepared to be a "racist" because you don't want to stick your butt in the air (5) times a day.

[Hugin]

Why not start by passing what everyone says they want?

They don't need to pass it. They already passed it! A 700 mile fence has been authorized, the money has been appropriated, and awaits only President Arbusto to comply with the bill he signed and build it. He won't do it because if he did, it might actually work. Then he would never get his amnesty/slave labor bill passed.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Just say NO to Illegal Alien Amnesty!! Keep calling!! It’s NOT OVER!!

U.S. Senate switchboard: (202) 224-3121

U.S. House switchboard: (202) 225-3121

White House comments: (202) 456-1111

Find your House Rep.: http://www.house.gov/writerep

Find your US Senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

[AngelesCrestHighway]

conservatives insist on enforcement “triggers” first....no triggers...just do what you said you would do!

[wastoute]

The only fences we REALLY need are the ones that would hold incarcerated poeple who hire illegals. The illegals would find their own way home quickly.

[Travis McGee]

"Border Reality 101"

This is what most of our southern border looks like: there is no government-built fence at all. There is often just whatever is left over from some forgotten cattle fence, built privately to keep U.S. cattle from wandering freely into Mexico. For hundreds of miles there is not even a broken cattle fence, there is nothing at all.

For comparison, below the broken cattle fence photo is a sample of an inexpensive but highly effective double border fence system, with a plowed strip to reveal footprints. This type of system is very cheap and can be built with great speed.

Here is what some of San Diego County has: a wall made of rusty Viet Nam-era runway mats. The corrugations are even horizontal, (to make climbing easier?)

Here is what the border looks like where the runway mat wall exists. Mexico begins on the other side of the ineffective rusty wall, which actually helps the smugglers, by hiding their movements until the occasional USBP vehicle has driven out of sight.

This is how "the game" is played. Smugglers hide on the other side of the wall with their dope and/or their illegals, out of sight of the USBP. They wait for the highly visible white BP vehicle to drive over the distant hills. Lookouts with cell phones and walkie-talkies report on the current locations of the BP units. They know with certainty that "the coast is clear" for an hour or two, and the smugglers and illegals hop the fence and run into the scrub only 50 yards away. From there, they are out of sight, and they walk 1-2 miles to holding houses. Then they wait for nightfall, and are picked up and driven in vans to LA or San Diego.

Next, we see the Duncan Hunter 15' fence, which is already being built along a few "showplace" miles of San Diego, mainly near the ports of entry, where panderng politicians can conveniently show it off to gullible reporters. As you can see, the rusty runway wall is seen at the left side, Mexico begins on the other side. In areas with the 15 foot fence, dope smugglers and illegals will have to cross the open sand ("the government road" as it is called) before starting to try to get over the 15 foot fence.

This new fence is extremely tough, and resists cutting. Attacking the fence would have to be done right out in the open, in full view of cameras. This type of fence, on the U.S. side of the government road, will give the USBP a barrier to patrol, instead of forcing them to chase illegals around 100,000 square miles of wide-open frontier land, which is a fool's errand. Everywhere this modern multiple fence system has been built, crossings by illegals drop to almost nil.

This ain't rocket science, folks. We're not talking about something like the Hoover Dam project, (which we managed to build 70 years ago). The world's last superpower, which put a man on the moon 35 years ago, can build a couple thousand miles of simple and effective fencing.

This is how it's being built in San Diego county, along the last 14 miles out to the ocean. The total cost of the entire fence from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific would be about 5 billion dollars, or what we spend medicating, hospitalizing, educating, and incarcerating illegal aliens just about every month. In other words, the fence would pay for itself immediately.

Or, we can continue our current policy.

[ccmay]

A 700 mile fence has been authorized

What a joke. The border is almost 2000 miles long. Nothing will change. This is a meaningless sop to the Republican base, while still preserving a steady supply of cheap labor for big corporations.

They must think we're idiots.

-ccm

[Hugin]

700 miles of fence would go a long way to solving the problem. It would cover all the easily accessable areas near population centers and roads. Most of the rest is rugged deserts, canyonlands, mountains, etc. that the average Mexican isn’t going to be able to get to, let alone accross. Build that first, and see what happens. But you’re right, since they won’t even do what has been authorized and paid for they obviously think we are idiots if they expect us to believe they will ever carry out the enforcement provisions in Presidente Arbusto’s amnesty/slave labor bill.