I will be all for the border fence as soon as you explain how you are going to run a fence down the center of the Rio Grande without denying Texans access to US waters that they make a living on. You can not build a wall on the Texas/Mexico border, there is a really big river there and several lakes.
I understand you can’t do it along the whole border, but how about along the areas that you can. Perry is against any fence from what I heard.
Like many, you perfectly illustrate the problem. And we can definitely build fencing on the US/Mexico border. Build it north of the river.
Seriously, think outside the box. You just don’t build a fence in those areas and concentrate surveillance in those areas.
You make good points but something has to be done. You say these people are running for their lives. As cruel as it sounds if they have no where to run maybe they’ll fix their problems. They seem to be putting us in that situation.
I’m surprised that I don’t hear this explanation more often. Building a fence down the middle of a river, through several lakes and splitting a few dams would involve some very challenging engineering to say the least.
And to build the fence on our side of the river makes even less sense since it would cede full control of US territory and the entire waterway to the Mexicans. That would actually be treasonous if not specifically endorsed by legislation at both the state and federal level.
Stock the Rio Grande with piranha.
Most people promoting a fence have no concept of the geography along that border. It would be quite the challenge to fence all of it. 1200 miles will only do for Texas. We will need 1969 miles of fence to go along our entire border with Mexico. Some have proposed building something similar to those concrete freeway noise barriers as a simple solution to building a fence. I have looked at the cost of such 20 foot high noise barriers. They cost about $2.2 million per mile. Even if we were to build those same concrete walls that we have along our freeways on the border, it is hard to justify the cost which I estimate upwards of $4.3 Billion on good terrain. On bad terrain, who knows what the final cost of it would be. For me it would be a huge gamble of a lot of money because once a way is found to defeat it, the fence and all that money to build it, would go down the drain.
You know how I would defeat it? I would take a charged 12 volt car battery and hook a cable and pulley system attached to 12 volt hoist on top of the fence. I would attach a basket to stand in for the ride up. I would ride the cable up to the top of the fence with another basket and drop it over the other side. I would attach it to the hoist and ride the basket down the other side. Once both baskets were set up, I could hoist my entire family over the fence one by one.
For those calling for a fence, when they exhibit the total ignorance of the geographic situation down on that border, would you want them gambling our money on a fence?
Then we fence all the non-watery parts. I know some people are concerned because that fence will run some distance north of the border for some distance.
That would seem to defacto grant sovereignty to Mexico for the parts south of the fence but I don’t see how else to do it.
Trade-offs ....
I want a wall.
With a moat.
With alligators in it.
Obama said so.
Piranas