Border Insecurity

This article says it all! This wall is not only another massive WASTE OF TAXPAYERS MONEY, but it won't solve the problem.

The evidence of this neurosis is visible at the border with Mexico, where the Department of Homeland Security has been rushing to reinforce an ineffective system of fencing and sensors, trucks and boots on the ground. The mission, imposed upon it by Congress after a wearying stalemate on immigration reform, is a mandate to do the impossible, at record speed and at record expense.

This commitment to enforcement alone, without fixing legal immigration, was always Plan B. Even President Bush, the master of the botched federal initiative, predicted it would fail. He is looking unusually prescient.

By the way, did anyone out there notice who received the contract to build this wall?

The main contractor, Boeing, rushed into the project with the wrong software. Its cameras couldn’t focus on targets, and systems were confounded by innocuous things like rain. The Bush administration has confused things further by saying the system is working as planned — but won’t be expanded.

There GW goes LYING AGAIN!

John McCain supports these failed policies. I guess he's the only one that doesn't understand it won't work because GW obviously gets it!

And there are a lot of other people living in border states that get it as well.

The view from Mayor Borane’s part of the world, shared by dozens of border mayors and sheriffs and governors like Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Bill Richardson of New Mexico, is that nothing short of a phalanx of federal agents standing shoulder-to-shoulder for 2,000 miles would shut the border the way the hard-liners on talk radio want it shut. The sensible solution is to bring the visa supply in line with reality, let workers and family members through more easily and give the Border Patrol the resources — virtual and otherwise — to catch drug smugglers and other bad people.

Is John McCain just senile at 72 and he doesn't get the reality? Or is he just pandering to the nut cases on the right that support this massive wastefule spending.

As full of holes as a well-aged Swiss cheese!

For example, consider the following:

A wall between the United States and Mexico will only escalate the enmity between the two countries.

The enmity in large part results from the Mexican government's assumption that it has some inherent right to send its economically disadvantaged into the US, regardless of whether those Mexicans choose to do it legally.

It was Gorbachev's response that brought down the wall...

Gorbachov did not intend to destroy the wall, he intended to reform the Marxist-Leninist regime through glasnost and perestroika; however, instead of resuscitating the system, it effectively took the system off of life-support and lead to the implosion of the Soviet imperium. The collapse of the wall was an unintended consequence, not a calculated initiative, in the attempted reform of the Soviet system.

Why on the one hand did the United States want the Berlin Wall torn down and, on the other hand, want to build a wall between the United States and Mexico?

The differences are obvious. The Berlin Wall, constructed in 1961, was a panic reaction of the East German state to keep in its citizens who preferred to live elsewhere. The proposed Mexican-US wall is intended by a sovereign state to prevent the illegal entry of the citizens of another nation where that other nation has made no effort whatsoever to respect the laws of the US.

Between the eighth and fifth centuries B.C., the northern states of China built a wall along their northern border to stave off Mongol penetration...

And that barrier worked quite well for some centuries to either eliminate or greatly reduce Mongol incursions. Until the Mongols attained a level of military engineering technology that allowed them to breach the Han wall, China remained immune to those incursions.

In 122 A.D., the Roman emperor Hadrian built a wall across Britain to keep Romans safe from the hostile Picts. The wall stretched from the North Sea to the Irish Sea.

Hadrian's wall allowed a receding Roman tide to remain in Britain for another 150 years. The real downfall of Romano-Celtic Britain came not from the Celtic Picts to the north, but from the other direction - the Germanic Anglo-Saxon invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries.

In like fashion, in the 20th century the French built the Maginot Line as a walled fortification against German incursions. With the use of airplanes, the Germans simply flew over the Maginot Line. Gen. George Patton called the Maginot Line a monument to man's stupidity.

A number of military theorists called the Maginot Line stupid - including Charles De Gaulle. The line stopped at the Ardennes because that terrain was deemed impassable to large mechanized forces.

Even the Berlin Wall was not impenetrable.

It damn near was, considering the drastic reduction of unsanctioned crossings; the shoot first and ask questions rule of the DDR had a salutary effect on all but the most daring. But then no defense is any more impenetrable than there is an unstoppable offense.

A U.S. wall on its border with Mexico has as its objective keeping out those deemed anathema to the incontestable values of the United States.

The wall is intended to keep out illegal entrants from Mexico - just as Mexico rather harshly defends its southern border from illegals trying to enter from Central America. Mexico cannot say its southern border is sacrosanct while insisting that the US southern border has to be negotiable.

Why not a wall between the United States and Canada?

Tens of thousands of illiterate, unemployed, non-English speaking people are not fleeing from a moribund economic system, are they. Yes, people illegally enter from Canada, but most of them appear to be non-Canadians - East Europeans, Africans and Middle Easterners - seeking to take advantage of the longest unfortified border on the planet. And Canada is much more concerned with its duty to protect the international border than is the Mexican government.

Or a wall along the Florida coast to keep out Cubans?

Cubans have - as a slap at the long-lasting Castro regime - been accorded special status by several administrations of both parties.

The inference is that Canadians and fleeing Cubans are good neighbors but that Mexicans are not.

The inference is that anyone, wherever they come from, is not a good neighbor if he tries to get into your home by crawling through a window rather than by knocking on the door and awaiting your welcome.

A wall between the United States and Mexico is intended to keep Mongol hordes of Mexicans at bay.

Are Mexicans who enter illegally any less Mongol than those who entered China without permission?

Will a wall help the United States in controlling its border with Mexico?

Yes, provided the sanctity of the border is enforced as necessary, and that includes deadly force where warranted by circumstances.

What is that lesson here? That walls are no substitute for diplomacy.

We have spent years trying to do this diplomatically, and the Mexican government has bristled at the thought of what it regards as the safety valve for its corrupt, moribund society being disabled. The border fence is a threat to Mexican politicians, not to the Mexican people.

In a washingtonpost.com article last summer, Luis Alberto Urrea quoted the Mexican consul in Tucson, Ariz., as calling the U.S.-Mexico wall "the politics of stupidity."

The politics of stupidity is (a) the Mexican government thinking it has an absolute right to protect its southern border but that the US does not, and (b) the US thinking that the Mexican government is going to cut its own throat to protect the US border from swarms of illegals it cannot support because of the inherent corruption in the Mexican system.

Struggling to shake off its repressive colonial past, Mexico is like most developing nations, charting a course for its people across rocks and shoals difficult to navigate. Democracy is a process, not a product.

Mexico has had 197 years to get it right, and they should not continue to hold the US responsible for underwriting the continuing failures of their own corrupt system. One of the definitions of stupidity is to do the same thing over and over and over...and expect a different outcome.

If you want to be a good neighbor, knock on the door and ask to come in; otherwise, the owner may just decide that his home is his castle and he is entitled to defend it as necessary from a prowler.

Most sincerely,

T. J. Flaspsaddle

The USA/Mexico border fences are merely another prime example of Bush' many expensive and dismal failures.

The fence is a waste of resources. The simple solution is to enforce the law against employers who capitalize on cheap labor. THEY are the ones causing illegals to cross the border. It seems to be a no-brainer to me. If there are no jobs to attract them, they won't be motivated to come here. Let Mexico solve Mexico's problems. They're so corrupt, that probably won't happen any time soon though.

Curious. How deep does the wall go? Will it stop the burrowing (as opposed to burroing) of tunnels UNDER the border too?

Like so many other Bush "initiatives" it is just a sop to a constituency that he and his cronies feel must be placated.

It is in a sense poetic justice that the border we constructed in violation of international law when we invaded Mexico should now become flooded with Mexicans returning the favor! And incredibly ironic that we will waste billions of dollars on a project that at absolute best will slow down the flow from a deluge to a mere flood.

I don't think I've ever heard ANYONE demand a wall when discussing this problem. No one in their right mind expects a wall to solve the problem. Has anyone ever heard of anybody who is against illegal immigration marching and carrying a sign saying "build that wall now"? I sure haven't and I follow this issue closely...not a single clip on the news.

This wall is purely an invention of the politicians.

Erect a twenty foot wall and you will have a plethora of "twenty-one foot ladder stores" on the other side the next day. Walls don't solve the problem.
However Felipe seems to think that a diplomatic solution will work. It won't.
The only solution is enforcement of the laws already in existence and that enforcement MUST be FEDERAL in nature and if the Feds refuse to take on their responsibility then the states must take it from them.
In addition, employers MUST be punished and the punishment cannot be so small as to simply become a cost of doing business. Business licenses must be pulled and CEO's held accountable both legally and financially.

Lastly, the slap in the face which is the unending string of benefits to illegals MUST END IMMEDIATELY. It's a slap in the face to both citizens and to those who came here legally, those who came in the front door, signed the guestbook and committed to learning and respecting our values while celebrating their own.
These are the immigrants who made this country great.
These are the ones who deserve the leg up.

The above will cause illegals to SELF-DEPORT.
No wall will ever cause that to happen, but it will make someone very wealthy.

JeffH in Occupied TX