The border fence (wall) is the best symbol we could have. It says stay the eff out. Stay home and don't bother us. Only come here legally.
USA fence proposal
Posted on 02/27/2006 8:57:03 AM PST by devane617
MEXICO CITY - ''The wall'' does not yet exist, and it might never be built, but already its 700 miles of fencing and electric sensors loom like a new Berlin Wall in the Latin American imagination.
The proposed barrier along the Mexican border was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives in December and is scheduled to be debated by the Senate next month. In Spanish, they call it el muro.
El muro has been a focus of news for weeks not only in countries such as Mexico and El Salvador that are increasingly dependent on the dollars migrants send back home, but also faraway Argentina and Chile. Across the region, el muro is seen as an ominous new symbol of America's unchecked power.
''The U.S. government has fostered an atmosphere of collective paranoia, given a green light to its spies . . . and institutionalized torture,'' Salvadoran novelist Horacio Castellanos Moya said. ``The only thing missing was a wall.''
The brainchild of Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., H.R. 4437 envisions two ''layers of reinforced fencing,'' new lighting, cameras and underground sensors similar to those in place near San Ysidro. One new stretch would seal off nearly all of the 350-mile length of the Arizona-Mexico border.
The beefed-up barrier aims to bring order to the chaos caused by an estimated 1 million people crossing illegally each year.
The bill also elevates illegal crossing from a misdemeanor to a felony and includes new provisions to limit hiring of undocumented workers.
The House approved the bill by a vote of 239-182.
In the lands south of the proposed barrier, news of the vote has been greeted with expressions of confusion, sadness and official concern. On Monday, the foreign ministers of 11 Latin American countries meeting in Colombia agreed to formulate a plan to lobby the U.S. Senate to kill the plan.
Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein, whose center-right government is close to the Bush administration, made an unusually strident statement against the bill last month.
''It seems to us a real affront that a government that calls itself a friend and regional partner only wants our money and our products . . . treats our people as if they were a plague,'' Stein said.
Only a minority of commentators have suggested that Latin American governments share at least some of the blame for the disorder on the U.S. frontier.
''The diatribes (against the wall) are a poor substitute for adequate policies,'' Sergio Aguayo Quezada wrote in the Mexico City newspaper Reforma. ``The long era of open borders is over, and the escape value is slowly closing.''
Others point out that the walls already in place for more than a decade in Tijuana; El Paso, Texas; and other border communities have driven illegal crossers into the Sonora Desert, where hundreds have died of exhaustion.
Fearing that more fences will result in more deaths, Archbishop Renato Asencio León led a prayer Mass in Ciudad Juárez against the proposal. ''We pray to the Lord that this wall not be raised,'' the archbishop said.
The president of Mexico's National Commission for Human Rights, Jose Luis Soberanes, called the proposal an act of ``idiocy.''
The Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre took a sounding of the country's artists and athletes, who unanimously condemned the fence.
''It's one more slap in the face from the gringos, an example of their cynicism,'' actress Patricia Orantes told the newspaper. ``The walls are falling now. Berlin's fell, and [the Americans] still haven't learned yet.''
Bristling over repeated comparisons across Latin America between the Sensenbrenner fence and the wall built by East German Communist leaders, U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza responded with an angry letter last month.
''Comparisons of proposals to alter our border policies to the Berlin Wall are not only disingenuous and intellectually dishonest, they are personally offensive to me,'' Garza wrote in a release issued by the U.S. Embassy here. ``The Berlin Wall was built to keep its own people trapped inside, and was created by an oppressive authoritarian government.''
The United States, Garza wrote, has an inherent right to defend its security.
Can we freely and informally waltz over your border, surreptitously start an illegal business or take an under-the-table job, not pay taxes on the earnings, sign up for social or health benefits without question, demand a drivers license, then send all of our money back to US without being questioned, let alone prosecuted?
Then, STFU!
could it be the Miami Herald's hispanic readers fear the redirection of immigration to miami?
If they're already protesting... let's give them something real to protest. I propose a half-mile wide mine field along the entire border. If land mines are good enough for South Korea to keep North Korea out, then land mines are good enough for us to keep the mexicans out.
Since it would be impossible for us to find each and every illegal immigrant, then deport them, I believe the solution is to make life here so difficult for illegals that they themselves decide to leave. Because they come here primarily for jobs, we should go after the employers of illegal aliens. If a company gets caught the first time with an illegal, the gubbermint fines you $5k. The second time it's $25k and/or shutter your doors for 30 days. (BTW, if you report a business for employing illegals, you are rewarded with a cash payment equal to one-half the fine.)
If you are a landlord and rent to an illegal, you get fined, as well. Restrictions on land ownership and borrowing. No bank accounts or check cashing for illegals. No more than one wire transfer to places south of our border, per year.
Let's stop the illegals from traveling inside the US: Proof of positive immigration status for drivers licenses, airplane flights inside CONUS, train travel, and bus trips.
Yes, our emergency rooms will still treat you and your kids. However, once their condition is stabilized, you all get deported.
If an illegal commits a felony inside the US, he does the time in one of our prisons, and is then deported. If he ever returns to the US, we will consider him a clear and present danger, then sentence him to death or life in prison.
Of course, all of these ideas are unpalatable to waaay too many politicians of both parties. One wonders who they work for?
The citizens of Miami would be naturally concerned about the wall because the influx of immigrants would "take to the seas", thereby increasing the illegal immigrant influx at the southern tip of Florida.
Add to this the Watermelons are crying that it will harm the environment.
Cheap at the price. If we don't build it, how many more dollars will the next 10 million illegals send home to the mother countries? The next 20 million illegals?
The rest of the world is OBSESSED with the USA as an "unchecked superpower".
The other nations NEED desperatly to play the USA and some other power. Without a "USSR" the other nations can't blackmail the USA to their third world advantage. They don't like the fact they can't do that any more and now the USA can make them behave.
The wall is to keep us gringos in, not the mexicans out.
"False comparison"
The fact that Mexicans are confusing the Berlin Wall for any wall the US builds to keep illegals out shows that their Public Education System in Old Mexico is just as bad as the one we have.
They are confusing nothing.
This is a classic straw man argument.
1. The US is building the Berlin wall.
2. Berlin wall = oppression and death.
3. Therefore if US doesn't support oppression and death they should not build the wall.
Works great for the uneducated masses.
But the Great Wall of China still stands...
too bad they feel that way. I am tired of them laughing at us and thinking we are such saps that when we stand up and want to do something about it, they cower away.
Unchecked power? WTF is up with that? We're building it on our side of the border to protect our lands and our own national sovereignty. How is that infringing on anyone else through "unchecked power"? What the h*ll do they expect us to do, just do away with our national boundaries so anyone can walk in and take over? Oops, I guess they do.
OTOH I now have a new line to try out on my neighbor who just put up a picket fence so he can let his dog run loose in his yard. I'll ask him if he feels guilty about his "unchecked power" (over me), and of how it isn't right that I can't just walk into his yard anytime I want and do whatever I choose with his land. Yep, good argument, that.
That's exactly what W is working for.
I dont know... If I have a choice between trying to sneak past a border checkpoint and chance it in the gulf I am taking the land route..
USA fence proposal
I doubt this is true. These open borders types will throw out any line they think will resonate with the stupid and naive among us.
If I had a neighbor put up a fence I have more respect for him because he is serious about his property. Mexicans and Central Americans see us as fat and lazy fools for not keeping out their hordes
Arriba con el muro! Y que lo construyan empezando ahora mismo! (Up with the wall! And start on it now!)
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