How long has this carping bullshit about a simple and constitutional law passed in Arizona been going on? One week? Two? Three? No matter. The usual "insulted/outraged" gang of quislings and traitors from the White House to the out house have long since shot their bolt and are now in the lebenty-lebenth reiteration of their blathering bombast. The tiny gaggle of people persuadable on the issue have long since been persuaded. Unlike wine, bullshit does not improve with age, it just becomes flammable. The manufacturers of it grow tedious and tiresome. They need to put a gas-soaked sock in it and light up.
The problem in Arizona can be seen by anyone with access to Google Maps in satillite view. Here's one small section of the border a number of miles to the east of Nogales and near nothing in particular. You can see for yourself going to Buena Vista, Mexico HERE and scrolling east along the line. [Set the map to satellite view.]
Click the image to enlarge it and savor the detail of existential distress in trying to "control" such a border. Note that the scale in the lower left is set at 200 feet. That's 200 feet. As you look at this map you'll note not only the road on the Mexican side running along the border but the trunk road running across the border and into Arizona.
You'll also note that there is NOTHING around for miles and miles except the same arid landscape. Absent a Berlin Wall structure with Stasi and machine guns pointed into Mexico there is NOTHING that could keep those devoted to rising out of the cess-pool of Mexico from making this trek.
And this is only a section of the Arizona/Mexico border at a scale of 200 feet. Only one very small section made a bit more convenient by the road.
This is the sort of thing that after being ignored by the Federal Government for decades Arizona is trying, in a small and o-so-delicate manner, to bring under a tiny semblance of control. But that, it seems, is just not good enough for the open-borders set and their eternally aggrieved and aggravated fellow travelers. Beneath all the bitching is the standard brain-dead yearning for the utopian land of ever-open borders no matter what is coming across them on the backs of the exploited and oppressed. At bottom it is an argument for expanding and maintaining the status-quo with all the drugs, violence, corruption, and social upheaval the comes with it on the Mexican border. It's not going to get any nicer in Mexico you know. It is only going to get worse and a lot of that pestilence is going to leak into the United States. The damage will be done but it can, to a small extent, be reduced.
The problem is that expanding and maintaining the status quo when you have borders such as the one above is that such a policy ends in guns. ("Imagine there's a civil war in Mexico. / It isn't hard to do./ Refugees in millions / And all their junkies too....")
Arizona, for the moment, is struggling to formulate and put into place a policy that does not end in guns. It's a reasonable and sane solution to an insane situation. That's why the insane sections and parties of our body politic are against it.
It all comes down, once again, to "Who are you going to believe? Them or your lying eyes."
Speaking of which, here's a pop quiz for any liberal friends you may choose to retain:
Funny. The popup in the bottom right of the picture says 'Report a Problem'.
Posted by: Cobb at May 11, 2010 7:20 AMYou're right. It does. Good call. I missed that.
Posted by: vanderleun at May 11, 2010 8:02 AMIsrael built 2 fences.
Terrorist problem go poof - and they have a heckuva lot less money than we do.
Maybe we should subcontract the construction problem to them.
Have this a federal security issue and let the legions rotate through with the sentry duties - thus ending any corruption issue.
It can be done. It really must be done.
Simple math
Posted by: Cond0010 at May 11, 2010 8:16 AMJust imagine the stimulus of building an actual wall. A lot of out of work construction workers would be happy.
Posted by: Duncan at May 11, 2010 8:19 AMA lot of out of work construction workers would be happy.
Especially the undocumented ones who would gladly build it for less.
Posted by: Don Rodrigo at May 11, 2010 10:31 AMWhy don't we build a road parallel to the border as well, and station officers with M-16s every 50 yards? Roughly 1,900 miles of border, 25 people per mile, less the impassable areas and already covered crossings, let's say 35,000 people on duty at any given time (3 shifts plus back-ups replacements, on leave, sick = 140,000. Every few miles, a tower complete with telescopic infrared cameras, etc.; let's say 500 of these. Costs:
$400x140,000 pay, benefits, uniforms, coffee per day=round to $21 billion/year
500 25-foot concrete towers w/equipment@$2 million each=$1 billion
1,000 (Ford) SUVs@$40,000=$40 million
Weapons, ammo, training, gas, bureaucrats, +/- $5 billion.
Road, at $1 million/milex1,500 miles=$1.5 billion
Total, $25-30 billion per year, max.
Illegal crossings--nearly zero. Heroin, coke, etc. etc., nearly zero.
Current Border Patrol budget, on the close order of $13 billion (includes Canada).
Total cost of illegal immigration? Who knows, but some multiple of the $12-20 billion additional dollars per year it would cost to really seal the border.
We have the money and the technology. All it would take is the will. One suspects that there are a number of forces who not only lack that will but profit from the current situation.
I would appreciate any critique of my figures or reasoning.
Posted by: Robert at May 11, 2010 10:43 AMDoes anyone think they can stop this Volkerwanderung? I don't, even though I (maybe) wish we could. I say 'we' even though I'm Canadian. Illegal Mexicans in Canada? Oh yes, plenty of them.
I have 2 formerly illegal ones as tenants. Best tenants I ever had.
Better read some history.
Too many Romans liked having lots of illegal barbarians around. Too many of us in what's left of 'Western Civilization' do too.
Can any of us point to our civilizations, replete with massive quasi infanticide and other moral degradations, ill disciplined socialist kleptocrat swine running the politics, and not conclude that maybe some fresh barbarian blood is needed?
I dunno. I like my Mexicans.
Posted by: Arminius Cherusker at May 11, 2010 11:14 AM"Especially the undocumented ones who would gladly build it for less."
But we all pay for it heavily in other financial ways. Our entitlements are getting stretched very thin.
Illegal-Aliens are treated like second class citizens - especially since they are illegal. That is not the American way. We do not want a 2 tiered society.
They either become legal citizens and go through the lawful channels for benefits as impoverished people or they should go home. If we need more low income laborers, there are many, many unemployed in the construction sector of industry.
Posted by: Cond0010 at May 11, 2010 11:18 AMAs a man said, since the dogmas of a quiet past are not working for the stormy present,we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think and act anew.
But we must act. There is much we can do at the border that is not attempted only because it has never been attempted, and because many do not want this invasion ended. They do not want ideas that work; if pushed, they would rather expand old ideas that do not work.
Posted by: james wilson at May 11, 2010 11:21 AMRobert, your reasoning is spot on, especially "All it would take is the will".
I don't think that's there.
Everyone knows American laws, procedures and personnel for fully legal immigration are disgusting, foul, nonsense whose only function is to benefit civil servants, that all potential legal immigrants are treated like shit, tormented, fee-ed to death and delayed for years, and people feel naturally sorry for most of the hard working refugees who break the rules. They know what bullshit the rules are. They fight contemptible bureaucracies every day.
Who do you hate more, the illegal Mexican doing the plumbing in your basement, good work, fair price or that IRS asshole with the attitude, you know the one who thinks expenses for routine things like 'cement' in your construction business are not allowable, because he's so goddam dumb and arrogant he understands nothing about it and thinks it's paper glue? [I am NOT making that up] Or the fat-assed lazy DMV clerk doing her job like a constipated hippo? Or the teacher who sent your kid home with 3 day suspension for having a plastic fork in her lunch pack in a 'zero tolerance for weapons' school?
Me, I'll still take the Mexicans.
Posted by: Arminius Cherusker at May 11, 2010 11:28 AMjames wilson, you say "As our case is new, we must think and act anew."
So sorry, but you err gravely. This 'case' has happened many times in the past. The USA will fail utterly to deal properly with the problems if people refuse to study the past.
So far as I can see there is absolutely no real difference between this mass migration of Latinos into North America and the mass migration of the Germans into greater Rome, including even loony ideas of reconquista, excepting possibly the tribal nature of the German swarm.
Posted by: Arminius Cherusker at May 11, 2010 11:59 AMFor 2 billion a year we can patrol the border with troops and close it off pretty tight.
One Light Infantry Regiment supplied with 80 helos and support can do it. This would be two layers of roving patrols about 5 miles apart. Back them up with UAVs.
Let's re-activate the 7th Infantry Division and get them on the ground.
Posted by: Austin at May 12, 2010 11:36 AMI dont understand why we don't just dig a canel
between mexico and the US.
Would be profitable to both countries and would
stop migration.
We must secure,patrol and fence the border. And here is how to pay for it;create and use E-verify system and impose a 10 cents on the dollar tax on all "guest" workers. Use these funds to pay,and or reimburse,states for the expense of dealing with fences,security and deportation costs (as well as the cost to house the criminal aliens in our jails and prisons).Also, we should add a week onto military service,for the active reserves,and have them assist in border security and structure.
Posted by: walter cyr at June 2, 2010 8:58 PMFor 2 billion a year we can patrol the border with troops and close it off pretty tight. One Light Infantry Regiment supplied with 80 helos and support can do it. This would be two layers of roving patrols about 5 miles apart. Back them up with UAVs. Let's re-activate the 7th Infantry Division and get them on the ground.
Posted by: AngelaCook at November 11, 2012 9:27 AM
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