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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."
A Latina family live near me. Mom, Dad, & a couple of pre-high school boys. They peridocally come through the neighborhood selling fresh, homemade tamales. I always buy (they're delicious) and have even given them a few things, like an unabridged english dictionary for the kids in school.
These folks are just trying to make a living & put their kids through school so they can have a better life. I guess I'm the only person in the USA who doesn't recognize that to be the horrible crime it is.
It's not the first time I've been wrong but sometimes I like being wrong. Just ask my ex-wives about that.
To have a well-defended border is not racism, it is border control.
Why don't we ask Israel how they're keeping their borders secure and take a few hints? Scale up the border and enforcement. Then actually treat the border as a no-go territory, where things and people get shot at or worse.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
At least in the long run. Say a couple of generations, with full English immersion in schools and government to prevent a Spanish Quebec.
Plus, it would save a lot of people a trip north and waiting until the next amnesty. They would get instant American citizenship, and people north of the current border get some say in what's going on in the deep, DEEP South.
How long until it's stolen? Seriously.
I never apologize. I'm sorry, but that's just the way I am.
Billions of dollars for contractors. The answer to illegal immigration is simple. Jail the employers of illegal immigrants. Presto! No jobs for illegals equals vastly reduced illegal immigration. The local chicken processing plant here actually warns their workers not to show up on days when the INS is coming. Their management should go to jail but nooooo.... can't have people with money forced to obey the law. That'll never do.
These folks are just trying to make a living & put their kids through school so they can have a better life.
They sure are, that's why I support fully a greater degree of legal immigration from Mexico. But it's also why illegal immigrants should not be given amnesty, and the ones that are here now should be sent back without exception.
Consider this, illegal immigrants make it much harder for people like you describe, to come here legally. Why should people have a shot at a better life by jumping the line ahead of people who are trying to do it right?
That to me is why fundamentally I support locking down the border as tightly as possible, because the process to be a part of America should be as fair as we can make it and not just for those willing to pay a lot of money to a lot of shady people just to get here.
Again, this is obviously in conjunction with a wider open immigration process that would allow a faster flow of legal immigrants - from all over, not just Mexico.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah, it's a national border; I have no problems with a minefield and machine gun turrets. As long as it's not used to keep anybody IN the u.s., it's completely acceptable.
I find it astonishingly ironic that the most rabid protectionists are also the ones who are apparently pro-free-market.
That's because you don't understand the physical limits of economics and of the free market.
The free market for labor only works in a closed system with reasonably slow population growth. Human labor is the only commodity that is self-replicating, legally protected and government subsidized. For those reasons it's also the only economic input whose supply has an inverse relationship to quality of living and, thus, utility. Without limits, labor supply would grow uncontrollably, outstripping demand and collapsing individual quality of life.
Look at almost any third world country for an example of this in action. China and India don't need more people. They're trying to kill them off as quickly as possible by herding them into polluted cities and enforcing quotas on cigarettes and limits on children. Saturating our labor markets with an unending flow of immigrants would cause Americans' quality of life to plummet, and would not appreciably improve the quality of life in the emigrant countries from which they came, because they would quickly be replaced.
Then, beyond any of that, which should be obvious by now, consider that labor demand is shrinking as technology improves. Jobs are increasingly being done by computers and robots. One worker can do the jobs of ten or a hundred workers of just a few decades ago. Energy is the limiting factor to future economic growth, not labor.
And you're wrong about one other thing: Borders don't create wars. Resource shortages create wars. Overpopulation creates resource shortages. And competent governments with well-managed borders prevent overpopulation.
I just hope that well-intentioned idiots like yourself begin to realize this before the next large-scale war is caused by China and India's overpopulation problems. Surely you wouldn't be so stupid and short-sighted as to blame that on racism and fascism when greed and scarcity are much more obvious culprits?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
That wall was meant to keep people captive.
This wall is simply meant to make people use legal means of immigration, which incidentally will continue to exist.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
No ones going to read this but, the birth rate in Central and South America has fallen off a cliff in the last fifteen years. At the same time the migration of people from rural Mexico to the cities is at the end stage.
What drives illegal immigration from Mexico is the weak job market and the emptying out of rural Mexico (because there are no jobs). Young people either head to the cities or north to the US mostly depending on whether they have relatives in either place.
However the rural->urban migration mostly finished and the lower birth rate means a better job market and settled population in Mexico. That means much much lower immigration from Mexico in the coming years. So this is a 'problem' that will fix itself and spending more money on it it is silly.