Posted on 10/18/2011 12:04:10 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Minnesota Congresswomen and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has become the latest politician to call for an impenetrable fence along the entire length of the border with Mexico. "President Obama has failed the American people by failing to secure the southern border," said Bachmann. "I will secure that border and that will be Job One."
Statements like that may get some attention, but they are not practical. Don't take our word for it; take Rick Perry's.
The Texas governor has been called a lot of things, but he's hardly a mushy liberal. Yet even this tough Texan sneers at calls for a Berlin Wall-style border fence spanning hundreds of miles from Brownsville to El Paso.
Two reasons: We can't afford it, and we don't need it.
The cost of a barrier like that would be staggering, certainly in the billions. Bachmann and others are silent about how they would pay for it.
Moreover, it is unnecessary. The Texas-Mexico border includes many miles of desert that are either lightly populated or devoid of any human presence. Illegal immigrants don't cross there. They make their moves along urban corridors.
Perry knows this because he is the governor of Texas. He knows the issue is more nuanced - like his support for in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants.
Secure the border? Absolutely - but in an intelligent way that puts our resources where they will have the most impact.
Voters should be wary of sound bites from candidates that fire up special-interest groups but lack logic. The next president will need real ideas, not gimmicks, to solve the challenges facing this nation.
Nope, but it’s a biggie.
Napolitano: DHS Authorizing Illegal Aliens to Work in U.S.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2795236/posts
First of all, that sentence doesn't really make sense, or it doesn't say what the writer probably thought it did. And "nuanced" here means what?
This looks a lot like misdirection. They aren't interested in stopping illegal immigration, so they point to ways to make illegals happier as a way of stopping the flow, as if that would do the job.
I don't know what to think of Rick Perry, but some of his supporters -- like this paper -- are downright repellent.
Sorry, I was late in seeing your post.
I do not believe or support Affirmative Action at all for anyone.
Click the keyword Aliens to see more illegal alien, border security, and other related articles.
I feel the same today as I did in 2011.
You’ve got to stop the bleeding and that means securing the border.
Give it a rest and quit wasting FR bandwidth pimping Perry. It isn’t gonna fly. Perry is a La Raza stooge and a liberal republican statist.
But he shares a fatal flaw with his fellow Texan George E. Bush: love of open borders and more affection for illegal aliens than American citizens.
Israel likes their wall, thank you very much.
Perry isn’t a mushy lib. He’s just, well, mushy.
he will make a great candidate for president
Amen to that.
I understand that some places cannot be fenced - that is where remote monitoring and rapid response (Heliborne?) teams are required. Common sense tells you that there has to be a multi-faceted response to border security.
What I can’t abide is someone who says it’s too hard, so we simply can’t do it. My response to that is ‘Hogwash’.
While amnesty does need to be stopped, I don’t see it as our primary and immediate problem.
The simple fact is that for as long as the border is unsecured, illegals are giving themselves amnesty by simply walking back in if deported.
We’re trying to cure the disease as the patient bleeds to death.
Exactly that’s how to do it.
We already have a pattern. A sample of how to do the fence. Just copy what the Israelis have done. Its 95-99% effective.
Let those in jai learn how to dig with shovels, pour concrete and install fencing.
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.