Replies

Here's the basic problems:
A - much of the terrain sucks; rough, nasty, hot, poison animals, and suprisingly low visibility (creosote bushes which are the most common flora around these parts seem to be designed by God to hide stuff, they grow about 7 feet tall and 8 feet around, are nearly impossible to see through and like to grow in lose clusters you can walk through if you don't mind a couple of scrapes), canyons, rivers, mountains, the tail end of Death Valley
B - man power, to man a station 24/7 and be able to deal with sick time and vacation and such takes 5 people (business 101), so even assuming 1 person can seal 2 miles of border (which I seriously doubt, but I'll give it to you because I'm a nice person), the border is about 2000 miles long, that's 1000 stations, 5000 men... then you've got support personel, you can't just have 5000 people strewn across the border, they're gonna need some place to stay, something to eat, and somebody to man their station when they're hauling bad guys in (business 101 doesn't contemplate having to leave a station during the accomplishment of duties)
C - sensoring equipment is nice, but it's only as good as your area of coverage and your distance of response, if the bad guys leave the coverage area before somebody shows up to aprehend them all the equipment accomplished was to get a headcount
D - getting a man on the moon is a hell of a lot easier than figuring who of the 280+ million people in this country are here legally, America is still big into freedom, if we had "papers" we showed all the time like the USSR it would be easy, but we don't, now it's hard; add to that the fact that we don't actually know how many illegals are in the country much less who the are or where they might be in this rather large country (2000 miles of border with Mexico, about the same for our north south distance, about twice as much for the Canadian border, multiply which ever of those numbers you need to get the area... it equals a hell of a lot of square miles), contrary to popular opinion they aren't all clustered on the southern border, Chicago has one of the largest Mexican populations in the country I'm betting not all of them are legal
F - I'll agree fully that we hinder the Border Patrol and they SHOULD be allowed to do a better job, but that better job cannot result in a sealed border, just ain't gonna happen

Night all.
E - I haven't heard of the Border Patrol doing anything during the LA riots, given that the problem was balck people and LA isn't on a border doesn't seem to be a lot of reason to bring them in

"Here's the basic problems: A - much of the terrain sucks; rough, nasty, hot, poison animals, and suprisingly low visibility (creosote bushes which are the most common flora around these parts seem to be designed by God to hide stuff, they grow about 7 feet tall and 8 feet around, are nearly impossible to see through and like to grow in lose clusters you can walk through if you don't mind a couple of scrapes), canyons, rivers, mountains, the tail end of Death Valley"

And blah, blah, blah.

Some idle and obvious potential measures:

• How about a one-mile strip strewn with land mines along the entire length of the border?

• How about using the National Guard to aid the INS in rounding up illegals? I propose tattooing the INS logo on the left buttock of every single illegal detained. "Amigo, we find you back here with this tattoo, we execute you." And do it a few times, on TV, and make sure the media in Mexico get tapes.

We are being invaded, taken over, and the conversion of the American Southwest into Atzlan (which I have no doubt you'd support and enjoy living in) proceeds apace.

We are at war, and wartime measures are called for.

--Boris

Couple of things:

It is true that you cannot "seal" the border, no border, no time.
But you sure as hell can make it difficult, you can make it MORE dangerous, you can lower the odds that any given crosser will make it safely or without being busted (one way or another). Having accomplished that much you are left with only the professionals to deal with and they should be dealt with as pirates and brigands: on sight.

And, I don't know what the border cops may have done during the last LA riot fest but the statement about those rioters being 'black people' is flat wrong. Rodney King is black (and, thankfully not in the news this week), Reginald Denny is white; the rioting actually started when a bunch of mostly white dip-sh*** tossed a police gate shack to 'protest brutality'. The rioters were polyglot opportunists for the most part and that's proven in miles of video tape. The one real racial lesson was that it was mostly Koreans who managed to defend themselves adequately.

From my experience as a Border Patrol Agent I can tell you the border can be shut off from the massive flood of illegals that are crossing. The main reason why it hasn't been done already is because we have so many people in the INS saying it can't be done. My Sector encompasses the In Ko Pah Mtn range east of San Diego. It is easily some the most difficult terrain on the southern border to police. When we make a concerted effort to do so we shut the area down. Of course, never having been a Border Patrol Agent and not knowing anything about our operations, it's understandable that you would think that it is impossible.

A - much of the terrain sucks; rough, nasty, hot, poison animals, and suprisingly low visibility (creosote bushes which are the most common flora around these parts seem to be designed by God to hide stuff, they grow about 7 feet tall and 8 feet around, are nearly impossible to see through and like to grow in lose clusters you can walk through if you don't mind a couple of scrapes), canyons, rivers, mountains, the tail end of Death Valley B - man power, to man a station 24/7 and be able to deal with sick time and vacation and such takes 5 people (business 101), so even assuming 1 person can seal 2 miles of border (which I seriously doubt, but I'll give it to you because I'm a nice person), the border is about 2000 miles long, that's 1000 stations, 5000 men... then you've got support personel, you can't just have 5000 people strewn across the border, they're gonna need some place to stay, something to eat, and somebody to man their station when they're hauling bad guys in (business 101 doesn't contemplate having to leave a station during the accomplishment of duties) C - sensoring equipment is nice, but it's only as good as your area of coverage and your distance of response, if the bad guys leave the coverage area before somebody shows up to aprehend them all the equipment accomplished was to get a headcount

To point (a) - motion sensors, heat sensors, and video cameras. These would, used together and feeding data to a monitoring post, permit a few people to monitor hundreds of miles of border. Also - the sensors would not just be deployed in a shallow line. Deploy them 5 miles deep. Sensors can use solar panels for power (the sensors themselves consume very little power.) This is not new technology, by the way -- the military has quite a bit of experience with this stuff. Its not real expensive, either.

To point (b) - deploy border patrol teams when border crossers are identified in an area.

Finally, when you say it is not possible, I merely point to the DMZ between North and South Korea. There is a place with rugged terrain, lousy weather - and really, really tight border security - for hundreds of miles.