I have seen better fences at the local supermarket for keeping shopping carts on the property...
I think Mr. Barrett developed a logical solution.
As a landowner in west texas that sits on the Rio Grande, I am against a fence along the entire border, and believe they are only needed in certain spots.
Any fence that cuts landowners off from the river will never be allowed. That is the only source of water in the region.
If a fence must be built... then build it on the Mexican side of the border.
If we could trust the Federal Government to even attempt to get it right, I would have no problem with letting them make intellingent decisions about where fences were needed and where they are not, and allowing them to make decisions about the best techniques to use.
But we cannot trust the Federal Government.
They have shown, time and time again, that they have no desire to get it right.
So we have to insist on the most basic, idiot proof systems, which can be physically verified. We need a fence, coast to coast, with an adjacent patrol road. We have to remove the discretion from the system, because the Feds have shown that they have no interest in stopping illegal border crossings.
Just build the damn thing in the parts where everyone knows it’s needed.
We can figure out the other stretches later.
It all goes to who hires who to build the fence...
The 0’ regime hired CGI to build a non-working website for 0’care.
The 0’ regime would do the same with a fence.
I *would* trust the equivalent of the Israeli government hire contractors to build an Israeli fence...
Practically speaking, there are five things the US needs for border security. Importantly, it is impossible to have 100% border security, but that does not mean you cannot get *near* 100%
1) The vast majority of border crossings happen in a limited number of corridors. If you fence just these corridors, the degree of difficulty for the majority of crossers becomes intolerable. So this alone prevents about 60% of the crossings. Very cost effective.
2) Importantly, non-Hispanic border crossers are willing to go the extra length, so border fences won’t really work for them. The most cost effective approach is an odd one, to put a cash bounty on them, payable to Mexicans, just hundreds of thousands instead of billions of dollars. The amount of money this takes is “peanuts” compared to other solutions, but would make the southern border airtight to non-Hispanics.
3) Drug smugglers need a military response. They can have serious weapons and vehicles, and are likely willing to shoot it out. In Texas, they put boulders on roads, making them impassable to vehicles. But you need close to crew served weapons to put a stop to this.
4) Border crossing is publicity driven, south of the border. If there is news that crossing is hard, many will not attempt it. If some American politician talks amnesty, there is a run for the border. So it is not unreasonable that the US should engage in a propaganda effort down there, to persuade potential crossers that it is difficult and dangerous, even deadly.
5) The US needs judicial reform in several ways to stop the flow of illegal aliens. This can only effectively be done with conservatives in charge of the house and senate judiciary committees.
We need 2 fences with Bouncing Betty land mines in between.
There is a solution here of using labor to build the fence cheaply.
Offer Mexicans who have been caught and are being deported, the opportunity to be forgiven their trespass by working X months on the fence project. The project would create labor camps that would build compressed earth blocks that would then be shipped to the fence location and be built into the wall. The labor camps would need support services such as food and cleaning so all kinds of workers could participate.
We need a wall, not just a fence, with no exploitable gaps.
ping!!!