Posted on 02/23/2005 5:42:22 PM PST by The Loan Arranger
From San Diego to the Rio Grande Valley, US soldiers are on duty. First it was the "War on Drugs," now they have an additional mission, blocking Mexico's emigrants.
In California's Imperial Valley, soldiers from an antidrug task force hunker over night vision equipment to watch for illegal border crossings. At the San Diego port of entry, National Guards inspect vehicles. In the Arizona desert, heavily-armed Marines, DEA agents, and the Border Patrol conduct joint patrols as training exercises. Inside a nondescript building on an army base near El Paso, military translators, linguists, and analysts decipher intercepted messages and feed the results into massive, interlinked databases. And in night skies across the Southwest, the drone of military reconnaissance aircraft breaks the desert silence. These are scenes from an intensifying campaign being waged on the US-Mexican border. A decade ago, the Reagan administration and an overwrought Congress drafted the US military to help fight the War on Drugs along the border. Now, in a significant break with past policy, which officially limited the military's crime-fighting mission to stopping illegal drugs, the Clinton administration has broadened the Pentagon's role to include suppressing the flow of undocumented immigrants. In January, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) unveiled a new battle plan to double US military and local law enforcement along the border. This plan will build on the formidable joint military-law enforcement infrastructure already in place as part of the Pentagon's antidrug initiatives. In the San Diego sector alone, some 350 members of Marine and Army units more than double the current National Guard and Pentagon contingent will help monitor electric sensors, staff night-vision scopes, assist with communications and transportation, and conduct aerial surveillance.
(Excerpt) Read more at mediafilter.org ...
I prefer to think of it as a defense against an invasion that is far too low-intensity.
Okay now I am confused, so what's this all about? And why the "barf alert"?
OK, is this an old article, satire, or does the author not know what year it is?
What military presence?
I think militarization of the border is a legitimate defense against drug runners, al queda and chinese spies.
Have you looked at the breakdown of the results on the poll question tonight?
I voted yesterday re: immigration and I was astonished to see that the most gung-ho for shuting the borders and militarizing them, were NON-MEMBERS---
Where did that come from---I thought we had a hearty group of FR members that feel that way, but members mostly went with the "enforce the laws we already have" choice...
Makes ya wanna go hmmmmmmm.....
I'm against shutting the border down and militarizing it. Anybody heard of NAFTA? I live in San Diego and I like going to Mexico to party and have fun with my friends in a much more free environment than the autocratic USA. What we should isntead do is work with Mexico to secure their borders, I don't want to need a passport to get through the gates to the USA, All I use now is my CA Driver's License! So much better. I would support making it easier for immigrants to get in LEGALLY. But not making it harder. I believe we need to crack down on the illegal immigrants already inside of our borders. 75% of our jail populations are illegal immigrants. I don't thinkt hat militarizing the border will help, it will only restrict my rights as a citizen to cross the borders at my free will. We need to work towards UNIFYING North America. Think of how much stronger our nation would be if we had the military support and legal power of Central America as well. Mexico is boosting our economy right now and we are boosting their's. Work with mexico, work against Iran and Syria!
Um, your post is a JOKE, right?
When will these idiots stop calling the army of illegal alien invaders, immigrants?
It is the duty of the Federal Government to send our military against invaders.
Remember the Alamo
This looks like an old Clinton Administration article. Maybe they saw a soldier wandering the border, and panicked. I don't know. But WHAT - military presence? That's exactly what is needed. The military have the helicopters and equipment. The current border agencies can't coordinate and cover the area. They are undermanned and underequipped, and probably in need of better training - a trained and deputized ranger force sounds like an option. A coherent group of tightly knit squads, all with the same goal in mind. And while gentleness would seem the order of the day to any reasonable ranger, harsh measures would seem quite justified only with regard to the coyotes and gangsters behind these excursions. If citizens of foreign countries get the idea that they can just walk across the border, undetected, and set up shop, buy a home, etc., that might work on a small frontier scale. But there are over 30 million people in CA, and the southwest numbers are growing, as well. A lot of these foreign nationals are not employed, but are being paid by the fed, state and local governments in a host of ways. And apart from the ultilitarian complaints with regard to that wage work (if it were made that foreign citizens had to contribute to a pool out of which 'benefits' were doled, some people might be less willing to complain), but there is just a notion that a nation without borders really becomes something other than a nation in short order. It has to be taken seriously. As I understand it, those nations 'south-o-the-border' take it seriously, themselves. Perhaps more might be done to publicize their treatment of foreign nationals illegally jumping the border into THEIR countries.
It makes sense because we don't actually need to militarize the borders or anything like that. If we enforce the hundreds of laws already in place, this problem will be gone with in weeeks. Like my teacher said, we have too many laws. Don't need anymore.
For what it is worth, I voted for the option of enforcing the laws already on the books---
I was just remarking that the non-members were voting overwhelmingly to militarize the border, in fact, on the breakdown I saw yesterday, when I voted, the option of enforcing existing laws, had 0% in the non-member section!!!
I hope you're joking, because otherwise you're an embarassment.
You like San Diego? Come live in Cochise County for a week or so. You'll be a different man, Joel.
I sort of had that reaction at first, I was bragging to another FReeper that if I were President, I'd build a wall on the US-Mexico border that would make the Israeli security wall look like a rope line. But when it was time to vote on the survey, I realized that if we just enforce the laws we have, this whole problem would disappear. I think non-members are voting for the other option because they don't understand that we already have laws to deal with this.
Solving the problem of illegal immigration is going to require a multi-faceted and complex response.
Yes, we need to dry up the lure of employment by enforcing sanctions against employers who knowingly employ illegals.
We need to deport illegals who commit felonies and keep them out.
We need to seal the border between ports of entry.
And we need to the last first, and do it now, before any more of my neighbors die. And if anyone's solution doesn't acknowledge that priority, theirs is the wrong solution.
I don't mind a debate, but that is a bedrock position from which I will not budge.
I think that all the laws we have on the books, state and federal, will do all that and more if people start enforcing it. we don't need laws or troops, we need balls.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.