Time to build a mini-Maginot line

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Guardsmen overrun.

About now would be a good time to put up the wall across the border and then build permanently manned bunkers 200 yards inside the border spaced every 1000 yards.

Seriously though, it is past time to due something about the border. I have no issue with liberal immigration laws and work permits, but there is no way we should allow the southern boarder to remain unguarded.

 

They should have blown the damn thing up.

 

I agree with you except for the work permits.

The state of the border with Mexico is a disgrace. The Southwest U.S. is being completely overrun by illegal immigrants. Los Angeles is effectively a Mexican city. The only solution is to come down hard on the people who employ the illegals so that the jobs dry up, otherwise they will just keep coming.

Just a couple of weeks ago two Long Beach cops were shot when they pulled over an illegal who had been deported several times before. A few days later the guy was tracked down and started a gun battle with police. Fortunately the police killed him. These aren't just harmless lettuce pickers that are coming over the border. Many are drug traffickers, gang members, career criminals and the like. Sure many of them are honest, hard working people, but you don't know which ones are and which ones aren't since they bypass the legal immigration processes. Literally anyone could sneak across the border with relative ease.


The so called "comprehensive" immigration reform that Bush, et al are proposing is utterly useless and is essentially an amnesty, though they'll never admit it. The last amnesty program in 1986 was a dismal failure and only helped create the problem we are facing today.

No matter what the apologists say, illegals are not good for this country. In short, they are parasites. We need to toughen up on the border and ignore the bleats of protest from a corrupt Mexican government that actively encourages its poor to come to the U.S. This is a problem that is far, far greater than anyone is willing to admit. We should have left Iraq alone and spent all that money and effort on the immigration problem. It wouldn't have cost as many lives, either.

The truth is that the U.S. government has no interest in closing the border. The companies that support the politicians profit too much from the cheap labor provided by the illegals. The American middle class will bear the brunt of the costs while the poor illegals are exploited and the politicians and business moguls laugh all the way to the bank. At least we'll have cheap lettuce...we'll need it.

 

Dinsdale,

To a certain extent you are correct...however, US citizens are not reproducing at a rate fast enough to fill all the jobs that are out there. Think about the fact that we have extremely low unemployment, and yet we have illegal pouring across the border.

We need them...but we need to know who they are, where they are, and have the ability to ship them out if they turn out bad.

 

You have a good point, Darkwolf. I'm not advocating stopping all immigration, only illegal immigration. Those who obey the law and immigrate legally are more than welcome; they are not the problem. Those that don't immigrate legally aren't welcome. We need to set a number of immigrants that we will allow in a year then stick to it. If we can support more, then the next year we should increase the number, all the while cracking down on the illegal immigrants and their employers. We also need to start putting diplomatic pressure on Mexico to get them to do their part in stemming the flow.

Of course illegal immigration can never be stopped entirely, but we do have the resources to slow it from a flood to a trickle. The cost of illegal immigration is massive, and any benefit we receive is outweighed by the cost.

 

Ah, uh, both of you enthusiasts. You know what Manstein did to the Maginot line?

 

Well, if I remember high school history Germany bypassed the Maginot line by invading France from Belgium. I also seem to remember that France didn't build the Maginot line accross the border of Belgium because they were afraid of offending Belgium.

HMMM, an interesting parallel, France's political correctness in not finishing the Maginot line resulted in the occupation and death of a lot of French men, and the US's political correctness in not enforcing our southern boarder is resulting in the death of Americans at the hands of violent immigrants and illegals driving without a license and insurance.

 

My point is rather: There is always a way around unless you go very far. Question is if you really want that.

You can have a nearly sealed off border. The French successfully did that on Algeria's border to Tunisia during the Algerian war, but that meant some 500 kilometres of minefields and field fortifications through the desert, and illegal trespassers shot or killed in or by the obstacles. And you need to militarise it, because neither US Customs nor the DHS have sufficient manpower to be up to such a task.

You're suggesting that America's southern border is to become a second Berlin wall. I've been there and have seen it. I seriously do not think you want that for America as well.

PS: I think that America's border problem is in fact an insurgency problem in Mexico, where drug lords and smugglers have created a relative safehaven. Fortifying the US border won't solve the problem. Mexico needs a concerted counterinsurgency effort in the north. They have been sort of trying, in the Mexican way to handle tings, and didn't get far. US pressure hasn't changed that much. Whoever met Mexican police will understand why. And the cartels and traffickers will prove to be quite a handful. And besides, fortifying the border will not take away the drive of people who come to the US to seek a better life.

The result of the incident will be IMO further militarisation of the border. Escalation is an instictive response, and US politicos have rarely been able to resist it. Very likely the attack on the National Guard outpost was a diversion to allow drug traffickers to cross the border safely elsewhere. Now that I call bold. It is quite possible the result of this incident is that the cartels will become emboldened and will increase their attacks on the National Guard. A very possible answer to increased attacks is that the National Guard will receive orders to shoot when attacked, and will create a really big mess.
I see this leading inevitably to US incursions, or 'hot pursuit', into Mexico (which is even legal after international law, to a certain extent). At a certain point the escalation will lead the US into pre-emption. That's just logic. I don't see this happening tomorrow, but that's the general direction.

I agree with you that control of the border is crucial government function. Failing there will both speed the unravelling of the American domestic fabric and undermine any remaining confidence that the US federal government can provide anything of meaningful value - particularly by its dependence on a grossly underfunded and overstretched National Guard (which is also fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and lends some credibility to the claim that the war in Iraq made America less safe). At stake is nothing less than the trust in the ability of the US government to protect its subjects. They didn't really impress in their handling of Katrina.

That said, the money a fortified border will cost is very probably better spent on manpower. Iraq shows that counterinsurgency requires boots on the ground. The hardware only helps, but cannot replace humans, and their minds. In their south, much unlike Iraq, the US will have the advantage of knowing their turf, the locals are to the largest extent on their side. That means they have a good chance of succeeding.

[ January 06, 2007, 20:04: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

In other words, we need to legalize them. Right?

 

AMaster,

No, I am not talking amnesty, at least not in a general wholesale sense. If they are already in the country and wish to remain then I think they should be allowed temporary status while the paperwork for permanent or temporary work permits are processed. If they have a criminal record other than minor offenses, they should be granted a work permit. If they have skills they should be considered for permanent status. However, any illegals who do not apply and are caught or who have serious criminal records need to be shipped out, and we have to have a way to keep them out. I also believe that we need to go after employers who hire illegals and make it cost prohibitive for them to do so.

I do not believe there is a "magic bullet" that will cure this issue...it is going to take a multi-pronged effort. We have to do this not only for our physical security, but also for our economic security.

I think it is very interesting that Mexico routinely imprisons anyone caught illegally in their country for 4 years, but screams when the US wants to stem the tide of Mexicans crossing the US border illegally.

Sorry Ragusa, but I don't see a solution in your post...it sounds kind of like passive resistance, and I do not believe that will work in this case. This is not an ideological struggle as we see in Iraq, and this is not a war as you mention in Algeria. At this point I am not aware of any direct, or even indirect governmental support of the gang organizations that are running rampant along the Mexican/US border (other than tacit approval in that the Mexican government has no incentive to remove these gangs and does little to stop them).

I am sorry, but your analogy to the Berlin wall is also not really relevant in this discussion. The Berlin wall segregated a nation, and was an implement of two powers that were using Europe as a playground for a proxy conflict. The US and Mexico are 2 nations that have divergent and opposed economic interests. Unfortunately the Mexican government is not interested in reforming their nation and becoming an economic power (something they could easily do given their natural resources). Corrupt nations have been invading other nations to support their avarice for as long as history has been recorded...this battle is just a little different as the Mexican government is not sending its people over with weapons to take the US resources...it is simply sending them over to work and send the resources home. However, given the impact to the people of the US, and the fact that we should have the right to say who does and does not come into our country, I believe that a military presence on the southern border is warranted, and that the economic impact of this action will more than offset the cost. Additionally, it will force Mexicans to address the corruption in their government.

Whether or not we in the US want to admit it, we want, and need, labor from outside to support our economy, however, we need to limit the negative impacts of this labor force to prevent it from becoming so costly to our society that it becomes a detriment...if it hasn't already.

 

A wall is a wall.

 

Organised crime, just like gangs, are in the essence a rebellion against government authority, and the establishent of a competing order - in brief, an insurgency, in this case against both the US and Mexican governments. They're in the same boat here. I think it is very illuminating to view orghanised crime through a counterinsurgency prisma. I think America is well advised to think hard about this problem. I think a cop will tell you a thing or two about oilspots of security in gangland.

You're right about passive resistance. It boils down to 'society hardening'.

And as for cheap labor, I don't buy the argument that the cheap labor resulting from immigration from Mexico is good for the economy. I doubt that economics rules the world, that economic activity is mankind’s most important activity and the most conducive to human happiness, and that economics is what politics is or should be all about. People blowing themselves up for their country, or for their faith suggest to me that culture is much more a driving factor than economy.
This 'Economism' does not just believe in markets, it worships them. The commands of the market overrule the claims of citizenship, culture, country. Economic efficiency becomes the highest virtue. This cult of Economism has spread in the US to an extent that many conservatives now believe it defines conservatism. Killing US jobs and sourcing them out to Mexico is just the more explicit variant of hiring cheap mexican labor in the US.

You might find that the liberal 'redistributors' and 'fair wage' types provide more for a 'hardened society' and are in the literal sense of the world 'conserving' the country. I'd rather have some of that dreaded socialism than instability, fraction and chaos.

I see that Germany in this respect also faces challenges, yet on a much different level. In Europe's south it's more serious. The Spanish are experiencing someting similar as the US with the immigrants from Morocco and Algeria. The French have their Algerians and Tunisians. The Greeks and Italians have their share, too.

 

I heard a joke that might be appropriate here.

Three things George W. needs to do:

1: dig a moat on the border of the US and Mexico.
2: Use the dirt to shore up the levees in Louisiana.
3: Take the aligators out of Florida and put them in the moat.

Seriously, they do need increased security on the border with Mexico. Even if it's just to catch the criminals and drug traffickers (or terrorists) that try to use that border to enter the US illegally. Tell King George that Al Queda is using that border to smuggle terrorists into the US and he'ss do something about that. Either that or invade Mexico...

 

Ahhhh...but then they'll pop out a kid or two, and mooch of the government.

Finally! Someone who agrees with me! Well...I would replace 'alligators' with 'robots with 50cal machine guns for arms' and 'sharks with lasers attached to their heads'...you make the border an undesirable place to cross, and less people will try to cross it!

I have no problem with Mexicans who come here *legally*. It's the one's who run across the border, hide in the trunk of a car, or sneak through in some other manner that piss me off.

During those Mexican immigration protests a few months ago, one of the main speakers for the Mexicans stated (several times btw) that, "We are not all criminals!" the fact is, if they are here in the US illegally, then yes, they are in fact criminals and should be dealt with accordingly.

If you want to be a citizen, no problem...just learn the official language (that's English btw...not Splanglish), and then get in line.

 

Maybe these from South Korea might do the trick?

 

Higher security won't work, short of shooting the people who want to come. They will find a way of getting in, no matter how high the fences are. They will only create more smugglers.

Just look at what happened last year in the spanish enclaves in north africa. The people stormed the fences topped with barbed wire at a personal risk just to get into the EU.

 

Carcaroth - that thing is awesome!

Now just mount it on a rail atop a 20 foot wall that guards a 200 yard minefield on one side, and the afore mentioned moat on the other.

How will the US pay for such things? Easy, make the illegals that the INS/border patrol round up build the wall, dig the moat, and place the mines. Upon completion, they can be "paid" by becoming US Citizens so they can mooch off of government welfare for the rest of their lives.

 

Well, I can safely say we won't lay minefields.

 

I always thought that purchasing the Great Wall and transplanting it on the border was the best solution. If that isn't cost effective we can build our own wall, that is outsource the labor to Mexico to build one for us.