Bending over for Vicente Fox & Big Business has put this country at grave risk

[Don Corleone]

Come on in, Al-Queda!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,162199,00.html

I can't believe this crap. Who controls our border policy, the INS or Vicente Fox & the CEO of Wal-Mart?

It's harder for an American citizen to get on a plane from Cleveland to Chicago then it is for your average terrorist to get from Pakistan to Phoenix, Arizona, provided he's smart enough to go to Mexcio first. Geez, I hope they never figure that trick out...

[PanzerJaeger]

This correlates to my argument about vast numbers of immigrants changing a society.

Politicians on both sides of the isle are so worried about getting on the bad side of mexican immigrants that they are willing to put the nation at risk.

[Don Corleone]

Don't kid yourself. Republicans are in this for cheap labor. They know immigrants always vote Democrat for the 1st generation. They don't know any better yet

[PanzerJaeger]

I dont know.. the Bush camp doesnt seem to want to concede the latino vote like the blacks.

[PanzerJaeger]

Of course cheap labor is a large part of it aswell..

[Red Harvest]

Yes it is a problem. However, if we are really concerned about it we are going to have to keep the bulk of these people incarcerated until they can be deported. Obviously, if we do that it will reduce porosity of the border, because being locked up for months or years, then deported is not a very attractive welcome mat for illegal immigration. The question is, are we and our fellow citizens willing to fund such measures? Seems crazy to me that we are releasing 85% of them. It is going to be hard to tell Mexico they need to do something about it when we won't even deal with the ones we catch.

[Xiahou]

The real kicker to me is, aside from all of the problems it causes us, is that it allows Fox to keep passing his own problems on to us. His government is corrupt and ineffecient, it can't provide jobs or basic services to his citizens. How do he solve it? Put out instructional pamphlets on how to sneak into the US. Our open border enables his failed policies.

[Red Harvest]

Xiahou,

You might want to reread the article. It is not about illegal Mexican immigrants as there is a return policy in place and apparently working for that, it is about non-Mexican illegal immigrants using Mexico as a conduit. I'm not sure how Mexico can stop that since it isn't being done legally anyway. It didn't sound like Mexico was facilitating their crossing the border (any more than Canada does.) As it also says in the article, US laws require a hearing for non-Mexicans being returned. So even if Mexico would accept them (and why should they, the people are not Mexican citizens), we need to be able to hold them during the interim while they await hearings. Yet we don't fund INS holding facilites to do it. So if we want to do something about it, we need to develop a plan and fund it--and work with Mexico on how to prevent it in the first place.

[Xiahou]

Red, my point still stands. By our lack of action we're endangering our security and enabling Fox's corrupt regime.

[Big_John]

i just want to point out that this is a fantastic smiley to use in this thread.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I think we should build a wall across the southern border, like Israel did. We pay for it by putting on the deficit, or even better, cut spending from somewhere. As a plus, we can use immigrant labor to do it, and all workers become citizens. There would be a large but manageable gate in every border state where you go from the US to Mexico and vice versa. Those gates would need to process a whole lot of people, but if it helped, I think it would be worth it.

It'll never happen.

[Don Corleone]

How would you man such a wall? Aside from which, even if we kept it all on our property (which Israel did not) I guarantee you some Lefty judge would find it unconstitutional on some grounds and order it torn down.

Nope, our legal system (politicians and courts) is bound and determined to allow any and all in.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Man the wall with local volunteers, who would be made into official border guards or something. It would be expensive, and someone would come in and poke legal holes through it. And the UN would probably combust over that "human rights abuse" - which would be funny but not helpful.

[Steppe Merc]

But how would you stop people besides the wall? Would you stoop to shooting them if they tried and cross?
It is a problem, and most of it is because of cheap labor. No idea how to stop it though.

[Xiahou]

You're also forgetting that walls drive the environmentalist whackos crazy. That's part of the reason why we can't even manage a complete chainlink fence.. if interferes with wildlife migration.

I said it in another thread, but my idea is put up predator drones over the border to spot illegals and back them up with periodic border patrol stations to round up the illegals when spotted. It wouldn't be 100%, but it'd be alot better than what we have now.

[drone]

I'm not so sure the wall thing is going to work, they find tunnels across (or rather under) the border all the time.

[Red Harvest]

Yep, tunnels would be difficult.

I would be interested to see the budget estimate for such a wall, and what it will cost to man it and maintain it. Most of it would run through areas that are very sparsely inhabited. I don't think you will find many volunteers to spend months (or even a few days) manning a wall in BFE that will take several hours to drive to and have no facilities. And what would the volunteers be allowed to do? Carry weapons? Shoot? Arrest? It's going to take some training and certification for sure.

Makes more sense to me to fund the INS with sufficient space to house those who are caught, get the OTM illegals a hearing quickly, and get their butts packing toward their home country ASAP.

And I suppose if we put one up with Mexico, then we need to do the same with Canada.

[Al Khalifah]

Man the wall with local volunteers, who would be made into official border guards or something.

I'd be very afraid of a man who volunteers for this job, bearing in mind the nature of the job that is being described. I don't think I'd trust them somehow.

[Ironside]

I'd be very afraid of a man who volunteers for this job, bearing in mind the nature of the job that is being described. I don't think I'd trust them somehow.

Well over 90% of the time you'll be doing nothing. Some people actually like that (personally, it drives me nuts after a while). The downside is that you're in a hot desert in the middle of no were.

But it will never happen as the wall would be 3,141 km long (the great wall is 6,700 km) and manned. It would be quite expensive.

[Al Khalifah]

The point I was trying to make is, if you went around asking:

"Hey, anybody want to come and protect our border from illegal immigrants?"

You might end up with a mob of biggotted maniacs.