Posted on 05/29/2002 2:42:12 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Bush does seem to understand that he must earn their love by promising things like food stamps to them.
That's the answer right there. I would throw in a guest worker program for those few handfuls of illegals who actually are coming here to work jobs that might be hard to fill. Then they can be background checked and given health screens and returned back to Mexico when their time is up for the job they worked but no one should be coming here illegally anymore.
You let one group of employers bring in foreign, slave laborers and WE, the American Taxpayers, wind up picking up their tab for health benefits and the cost of policing the program. It will cost more to care for these slave laborers and to see they obey their visas than any benefit derived, by the U.S. Taxpayers, from their presence.
If employers can't pay enough to attract America workers they should get out of that business. That goes double for landscapers and lettuce growers! If Americans won't pay the price you say your product or service is worth than they, obviously, don't want those goods and services.
I don't care, if I never eat another salad, again. I want my country back!
I avoid the "root causes" argument, made famous by the left, that undermines practical measures to stop the invasion. "Unfair" poverty can be an excuse for all kinds of lawless activity.
If illegals and their cheap labor are taken out of the equation, many, many businesses will begin to rebel in desperation merely to try to stay viable. The federal government eats a massive amount of our GNP. The other levels of governemnt, which are peopled by members of the same two parties who want to move up to the federal level, imitate the feds in writing worthless legislation and regulation and taxing everything imaginable.
That's why I think politicians are going to try to keep the flow of illegals going no matter what we say about it. They have also seen the side benefit of having a new constituency who won't talk back and who will vote for whoever offers the most cookies.
The question is whether it will slow it enough to justify the enormous expenditure of money required to put it up and maintain its effectiveness.
The wall would not stop everyone but it would create a major obstacle to border crossing.
For a short while, until the illegals learn how to bypass it.
I suggest you not waste your time arguing with someone who looks at the effectiveness of walls and fences over thousands of years and then dismisses that evidence.
The one datum point we have for the effectiveness of a wall on that scale is not encouraging.
They use a ladder to climb up on the Mexican side, and a rope to descend on the American side. Only those who are classified as 4F by Selective Service would think this to be any sort of extreme physical challenge.
With a soft or, deliberately, irregular footing at the base of the wall, the ILLEGAL ALIENS would need a 45 to 60-foot-long ladder!
Or about four square feet of plywood to distribute the load. Of course, you have the small problem of that soft or irregular footing also making digging under the wall a feasible prospect, which means you will need even more troops...
This isn't a problem that can be solely solved with more and bigger sticks. You're going to need a carrot (actually, a BUNCH of carrots) at the same time.
That estimate was based on the only successful efforts at ending illegal crossings--Operations Hold The Line and Operation Gatekeeper. The coverage in those instances was one agent per ten yards, or 176 agents per mile of border, actually on post at one time.
BTW, that's not 42,000 servicemen to get 14,000 per shift, unless you intend that those servicemen never get sick, never need to perform other duties such as Barracks Duty NCO or mess duty, never get a weekend off, and are never permitted to take leave time during their enlistment. It's actually 70,000 (it takes five bodies to man one post 24/7, not three). And those 70,000 would be enough to man, at levels known to be effective in stopping illegal immigration, a whopping 56 miles of border.
People are so quick to blame it on the Democrats and liberals - but they are not in charge and they only have a slim lead in the Senate, and a minority in the House.
How does anyone in good conscience lay it all on them. WE have had substantial representation, including the the majority of House and Senate for a while. Did we see any changes? Absolutely not.
You're still going to need a lot of manpower--2,000 miles is a HUGE distance, and there will still be a LOT of effort to breach or bypass the wall SOMEHOW. There are places where you can't see the border from 100 yards away--a 30-foot wall will not improve matters enough to justify the price tag associated with it when you consider Davis-Bacon Act "prevailing wages" (read: AFL-CIO-dictated wages). Guess what happens if Congress authorizes the wall? The AFL-CIO construction trades in the border region will all go out on strike for MUCH higher wages between the time Congress passes the legislation and the Corps of Engineers puts out the RFPs.
Another problem is that there are many places where the civil engineering equipment needed to emplace a huge wall like that simply can't go, but people can still go on foot quite easily.
Finally, you're going to have to guard the coastline and all waters adjacent to them (including the international waters at 12 miles out) very tightly, and that manpower requirement is going to cripple you. You're going to have to guard every inch of coastline between Matamoros, Texas and the Maine/Canada border. You're also going to have to build ANOTHER 30-foot high wall on the Canadian border (Canada's immigration enforcement makes our INS look like the old East German Border Guards in terms of efficiency--they just don't CARE who comes into Canada, particularly if they're just passing through to the US). And then you're going to have to mount a very tight and intrusive patrol on the Great Lakes--the 30-foot-wall idea doesn't work so well there.
You'll slow down illegal immigration for a while--and then you're going to notice huge numbers of illegals in places they've never been before.
What do you think they have down there, a country full of trapeze artists?
LOL.
Near zero. However, what percentage of Mexican women and men would actually be facing soldiers opening fire on them with those weapons? Also near zero.
Consider this point also: they wouldn't be allowed to shoot that stuff into MEXICO (hint hint), they'd have to wait until they were already on top of the wall and descending.
What do you think they have down there, a country full of trapeze artists?
No. What do you think we have up here, an infinite number of soldiers?
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