Work Resumes On Virtual Fence With Mexico

Hugh Pickens writes "Work resumed this week on the five-year project to link a chain of tower-mounted sensors and other surveillance equipment over most of the 2,000-mile border with Mexico. The network of cameras, radar, and communications gear is intended to speed deployment of US Border Patrol officers to intercept illegal immigrants, drug smugglers and other violators, yielding greater 'operational control' over the vast and rugged area. A $20M pilot project for the Secure Border Initiative, or 'SBInet,' carried out in the Bush administration, was generally considered a colossal IT failure. Since that time the DHS has given the prime contractor, Boeing, another $600M. The government says it has learned many lessons and made many changes in the program since the previous pilot rushed off-the-shelf equipment into operation without testing. The Obama administration has lowered the cost estimate for the 5-year project by $1.1B, to $6.7B, mainly by deferring work on the most difficult 200 miles of the border, in southwest Texas."

Comments

Re:Good Grief!

[flyingsquid]

$600,000,000? That's insane. I could easily secure the border for *half* of that. Consider: if there are 24 hours in the day, and 365 days a year, and labor costs 5$ an hour, then it would cost 43,800 dollars to have a section of border guarded 24/7/365, presumably employing three different guys in eight-hour shifts. With $300,000,000, you could employ 6,849 guys at those rates. The U.S.-Mexico border is only 4,000 miles long, so that's more than one guy for every mile of the border (and this is on top of the existing border patrol).

So now you've got round-the-clock, year-long border security, just by paying a bunch of guys five dollars an hour. Now, I admit that it might sound difficult to find people who would be willing to patrol the border, facing off against smugglers and drug runners, enduring cold nights and scorching hot days, all for just $5.00 an hour. But here's the really ingenious part of the plan: we employ illegal aliens from Mexico to do the work for us!