I’ll just note that Palin doesn’t mean we should secure all our borders, just the Mexican one. There is no fence between Alaska and Canada.
And there is no fence between Alaska and Russia, separated by a distance small enough you can see Russia from Alaskan soil.
The reason for the first is that we don’t fear Canadians overrunning our country, because they have a solid economy. Until Mexico can develope a modern economy, we’ll spend billions on southern border security. If we could spend half of that and bring up their standard of living so they didn’t want to come to our country, that would be great, but we haven’t had much luck with such plans.
The reason for the second is because there are some borders where it is unlikely people will try to come in, so even though they are borders with our enemies, we don’t need to fence them.
Nobody calls for a fence along the gulf of Mexico, even though it would be a trivial thing for Mexicans to get into boats and take a 1-hour boat ride and come ashore. I note they don’t do this now, but that’s because it’s easier to cross the border, even through the desert.
But if you put up a wall that ends at the gulf of mexico, they are going to try to go around the edge of that wall. We’ll certainly need to defend that edge, and once they realise that boats work, and the rest is a wall, they’ll just use boats. And we’re back to having to patrol again.
Or, we could build a fence up the coast. Now, why wouldn’t we do that? Because we like our beaches, we like the access to the Gulf of Mexico. If you owned a beach house, would you want the government to put a wall in front of your house, cutting you off from the beach?
Well, that’s the problem in Texas. People own land that goes up to a lovely river. They like fishing the river, they like the view. The United States OWNS half of that river.
A border fence would cut off Americans from access to our own river. It would mean we couldn’t fish in the river, couldn’t boat in the river, we couldn’t swim in the river. Recreation areas built by the river would be closed down. We would essentially be ceding a national treasure to a foreign country.
It would also cut off wildlife from the river. There are many species who depend on river access for their livelyhood, and without water, their population could be decimated.
Anyway, my point is that nobody wants to fence in our entire border. So we understand and agree with the concept of strategic fencing. Nobody wants to fence off the beaches along the Gulf of Mexico, so again, we understand the idea that some borders can be secured without fences, and we understand that access to resources like a beach, or a river, trumps building a wall.
The real question isn’t “strategic” vs “full” fence, because nobody believes in a “full fence”. It’s just a question of how much strategic fence to we need. We are arguing over degrees, not principle.
******************************
How do you know that "nobody" wants to fence in our entire border? A poll? Intuition?