1 - A real, physical fence will actually work. It will effectively slow down and/or stop illegal crossings
2 - A real fence doesn't cost enough and doesn't require multi-million dollar contracts to purchase expensive equipment from companies run by large financial contributors to politicians. And once a real fence is built there is no need for additional contracts for expensive upgrades, maintenance and repairs.
What good is an expensive government project if politicians and bureaucrats can't channel the money to their friends and financial backers? Politicians are less concerned about the effectiveness of a project than the size of the contracts and who gets them.
Yeah.
A (nonexistent) virtual fence has lots of holes (er, flaws.)
But you see, Washington NEEDS a virtual fence so they can COUNT the number of illegal voters (er, immigrants) coming across so they can ramp up the welfare and Medicare payments properly ...
Love to be the gub'mint contractor that got that gig...low risk, high reward.
Relax. It was only 80. As long as they weren't Arabs smuggling nuclear bomb parts, we'll be fine.
I’d like to see these asshats in our Government try to at least once to figure how to sensibly spend our money.
Just build the damned fence. Humor us, after all we are paying for it.
We could hire illegals to build the fence for cheap, building it up from the south side. Financial problems solved, and auto-deportations as a bonus!
Seriously, though...somehow we have got to get around the “what’s in it for me?” attitude and just build the thing. Like NOW.
But it sure ain’t gonna happen with Clintoon, Obamanation, or McQueeg in charge. We’re screwed.
I wonder if Chertoff the Great spends his own money this way. What typical 'government think'. Nah, let's not make it actually work, just say it does and knock a couple o'bucks off the ticket and we'll call it even.
I will be so glad when these goons are out of a job. It could not possibly be any worse.
There will predictably be one other, major problem. Illegals will simply walk through, and what does the government propose to do about it?
Should they send Border Patrol people to shoot them? What will they do when Mexican soldiers cross the border, escorting drug smugglers?
Will the prosecute anyone who tries to stop these illegals, as they have done in the past? Will they give tickets to Mexicans who run over police or border patrol agents with their cars and trucks?
Put up a real wall, for heaven’s sake. And fire that jerk Chertoff.
DUH
(((((BUILD THE FENCE))))
The REAL one that Duncan Hunter wants to build...
Put Duncan in charge of the construction...
The money for it was appropriated Sept, 2006
Yeah, we know a virtual fence won’t work.
Arm the border with a militia.
A virtual fence would be great, if illegal immigrants were only virtual.
A “virtual fence” equals a “Welcome Mat”!
bump
The secret: The vitual fence is NO FENCE AT ALL...
1 - A real, physical fence will actually work. It will effectively slow down and/or stop illegal crossings
2 - A real fence doesn't cost enough and doesn't require multi-million dollar contracts to purchase expensive equipment from companies run by large financial contributors to politicians. And once a real fence is built there is no need for additional contracts for expensive upgrades, maintenance and repairs.
What good is an expensive government project if politicians and bureaucrats can't channel the money to their friends and financial backers? Politicians are less concerned about the effectiveness of a project than the size of the contracts and who gets them.
Exactly right! On all counts.
I am in favor of a double-layer fence, with razor wire atop both fences, and a concrete floor reaching deeply inside the inner fence, to make tunneling difficult.
No doubt, some who are indifferent to the current invasion (or who secretly support it) would compare such a wall to the Berlin Wall of the Cold War era. But I have very little patience for anyone who cannot (or will not) differentiate between a wall designed to keep people prisoners in their own failed state, and a wall designed to preserve national sovereignty by making immigration an orderly process.
"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.
