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The Death of the US-Mexico Virtual Fence
eldavojohn writes "A couple of years ago it was announced that the Boeing-built virtual fence at the US-Mexico border didn't work. Started in 2006, SBInet has been labeled a miserable failure and finally halted. A soon-to-be-released GAO report is expected to be overwhelmingly critical of SBInet, causing DHS Chief Janet Napolitano to announce yesterday that funding for the project has been frozen. It's sad that $1.4 billion had to be spent on the project before the discovery that this poorly conceived idea would not work."
Asking immigrants to follow the law and immigrate legally isn't being a xenophobe.
Gone!
As a legal immigrant I can tell you that the hassle to be legal is so high that sometimes I wonder if I should just stop bothering and become illegal
Couldn't that $1.4 billion have been better spent buying Valium for the rampant xenophobes in Congress? Just trank 'em all out and stop them from worrying about a non-problem.
One of L. Sprague de Camp's fantasy novels features a tribe of barbarians who discuss all political issues twice: once sober, once drunk.
I think this is an excellent idea. Who's going to lobby Congress?
Asking immigrants to follow the law and immigrate legally isn't being a xenophobe.
No, but structuring the legal immigration process so that it's darned near impossible to immigrate unless you're highly-educated is.
My wife and I have been trying for years to help a friend of hers who is a Nigerian national living in Italy come over. At one point a staffer in our congressman's office got so frustrated with the law that she actually suggested that my wife's friend come on a tourist visa and then overstay! It appears that the best legal option is the immigration lottery.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The nature of political debate and commentary shifts. I can see it now...
* "We need to allocate more funds for Congressional statutory drinking"
* "I can't drink - my religion prohibits this. This law is unconstitutional, waaa!"
* "If you don't drink (Johnny Walker/White Horse/Jack Daniels) you're not a REAL American"
* (In Texas) "...how can we entertain a notion inspired by those East-coast ivory-tower appletini-drinking fag^H^H^H^H liberals...."
* (In Mass) "...how can we entertain a notion espoused by those cow-herding, tequila swilling hick^H^H^H^H conservatives..."
* "The honor'ble member is a MORON! (barf)"
* 100 drunk Senators song
* "More hookers!"
* Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the temperance movement? (Follows the "I have here a list of non-drinking employees of the Department of State" speech)
* Read my lips: no more scotch!
* "Trickle down" economics gets a whole new twist.
* "Mr. President, we must not allow a distillery gap!"
There is no way to "create jobs" in Mexico without first staging a revolution. The problem is that the upper class owns just about everything and isn't interested in employing people and is very interested in keeping prices for things like food down. So the farmers get nothing for their crops and end up living as subsistance farmers. Understand that it is completely divided across racial lines in Mexico - the Mexican Indians are poor, the Castillians are the upper class. Why we in the US should help perpetuate this system is beyond me.
How do you fix that? Well, building foreign-owned factories doesn't do it. Sure, it makes a slight difference in an area around Juarez, but nothing else. And because there is no foundation to build on, the people with jobs at the factory have no idea what to do with their different life.
Today, if someone crosses the border from north to south into Mexico they will be met by the Mexican Army, arrested and likely confined, possibly for a long time. There is no possibility that someone is going to stay there unmolested - the people will turn the "invader" in if they manage to elude the Army and the police. This is the complete opposite of what happens to a border crosser going from south to north - which means pretty much we deserve exactly what we are getting.
The only way that this will end is when the standard of living is equal between the two countries. Since raising the standard in Mexico is impossible because of the culture and financial system, it means that the US has to have the same standard of living as Mexico does today. With 25% real unemployment, very tight credit and a collapsed housing market we are well on our way there. When the amnesty is passed later this year we will likely see that there are 20-30 million people from Mexico in the US in a few years. This will pretty much put the finishing touches on the labor market.
A strong border is simply not a priority with most people. Either they don't see the effects or they somehow believe that we "owe" it to Mexico to help the poor people so the upper class can continue to ignore them. Of course many businesses welcome the minimum-wage labor force that is supplied from Mexico. The work that cannot be outsourced can be done in the US by people to whom minimum wage for a week is 10 times what they could make in a year back home.
Sure, we could have built a strong border - but without support of the citizens of the US it would never work. And we clearly do not have support of the citizens. Napolitano wanted to throw open the border when she was governer in Arizona, probably mostly for the benefit of the businesses here. The fact that it makes getting a entry-level low-skill job impossible meant nothing to her.
We better build a really strong social safety net, because when we are at 30-40% unemployment we are all going to need it.
The only thing coming out of Washington that is good for 'We The People', is gridlock. When they actually do stuff, it always seems to cost us more.
Well, that just might be the intent. After all, for several decades now the US government has been mostly run by people who consider corporate profits the most important thing in the world. Of course, we've long used the term "pork" to refer to Congress passing laws designed to funnel money to companies in their district. This story is just a more blatant recent version of this, where the money is funneled to construction companies while openly ignoring questions about whether it'll even work. The real answer, of course, is "Who cares?", since the actual goal was enriching the officers and stockholders of the construction firms.
The other growing example of this is the US pseudo-debate over health care. If you listen to this "debate" at all, it rapidly becomes clear that they almost never discuss health care itself. Rather, they always talk about the money, primarily insurance money. The main consideration in both Congress and the White House is that the existing insurance companies and the flock of other medical management firms, which do no actual medical work at all, maintain or increase their income. Actual medical care is far down in the list of priorities. Even when corporations such as hospitals are discussed, the "issues" are things like profits, mergers & acquisitions, etc.; they rarely deal with any actual medical issues.
It was especially blatant in the recent "bank bailout". Many analysts reported that the government's support money went almost entirely into three things: officer bonuses, share dividends and acquisitions of smaller financial firms. Almost nothing went into fixing the problems that had got the financial system in trouble. So this was yet again a way of funneling money into the corporate owners, with no concern for whether it solved any actual problems.
But none of this should be surprising. We've even read here frequently how the only important thing is corporate profit, and corporations exist for no other purpose. When this is the major source of almost all campaign funding, you should expect exactly what we've got. And it's the main ideology in US politics these days, in both major parties and several minor parties.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Mexico operates a strict immigration policy which seeks to protect the interests -- especially the job interests -- of its own citizens. You will need to prove an income from a foreign company or have specialized skills to be granted leave to live and work in Mexico.
From http://www.mexperience.com/liveandwork/livingconsiderationsmexico.php#4
The truth of the matter is, US immigration policy is far more lenient than most countries in the world
After reading through 100 comments on the politics of Mexican immigrant workers, I realized I'm reading a technology blog, and all I wanted to know was why the fence didn't work. The article doesn't really say. It says the "fence" is composed of towers with monitoring equipment. But it doesn't really say what that equipment was supposed to do, or what it failed to do.
"Ninety to 100 percent of all illegal crossers, this camera system was going to identify and characterize this threat,"
What does that mean? Was it supposed to magically know who was crossing illegally and who wasn't? Or identify Mexicans -vs- Americans? That's silly. Was it just supposed to detect people, or movement? Did it fail at doing that?
"It's not a matter of, you know, do you look at the screen and see things?" Stana said. "Yes, you're going to see some things. The question is: Are you going to see things over time? Is it a quality image and is it a reliable image?"
This is still very vague. It is supposed to "see things over time" - what things? Over what time? Was it supposed to identify behaviors somehow?
This whole thing is really vague.