let's see if it will work.

oldsoldier wrote: The only way it will work is to make it resemble and operate as did the East/West fence of the old Soviet Eastern European Block. Other than that it will be an expensive symbol, bout it.

Concur - although quite that level of manpower probably wouldn't be needed with modern technology, making a fence that covers a third of the border isn't much use.

Not to mention, of course, that our much longer border with Canada remains unprotected.  If I'm a terrorist, I'm walking across from Toronto.

Symbol indeed.

Clearly immigration is the major driver behind this, despite the occasional cloaking in national security.

I also oppose illegal immigration, simply because society functions best when there is alignment between laws and behavior.  It is good for nobody when laws are widely disobeyed (speed limits come to mind).

This is where the symbol comes in.  While this fence will presumably be placed strategically to address current high-bordercrossing areas, it appears rather foolish to think that a fence this short will cut off illegal immigration.  Make more difficult, yes, but hardly cut off.

But mainly, to me, this is the wrong way to go about fixing illegal immigration.  Where there is great supply and great demand, the two tend to find a way to get together, and putting a fence between them usually doesn't work too well.  Witness prohibition, the war on drugs, laws against gambling and prostitution.  It took me two days to get back to online poker after Congress tried to shut that down two weeks ago.

Notice also that while Mexicans are the largest group of illegals, they are certainly not the only.  The thousands of illegals from Korea, the Phillipines and elsewhere aren't going to be affected by a fence either.

So - while I support a secure border as a matter of national security, I think this fence is an entirely symbolic and futile stab at illegal immigration.

Mephistopheles wrote: Simple solution. Fine out the *** any business that employes and harbors illegal immigrants. They will keep coming over as long as jobs are going to be available.

I agree completely that this is the only method that is likely to succeed in enforcing our current laws.  Better yet, make it a crime, and start sending individual HR managers to jail.  That will stop illegal hiring in a hurry.  And when illegal hiring stops, there will be less incentive for illegals to come here.

Of course, that still doesn't address the issue of whether the laws we have are the correct laws.

RicWhic414 wrote: It would be so hard for the government to go to every place and check all the paper works of everyone that works there...

That's not how it would work.  Proper paperwork for employment is already required by law.  The tracking mechanism is already there.  The government doesn't go and look at everybody's tax return either, yet tax fraud is relatively minor.  The reason is the penalty.

Two changes would have to be made to enforce this. 

First, jack up penalties and enforcement.  It is very rare that any enforcement action at all is taken against illegal employers.  That would have to change.  It wouldn't be hard - illegal laborers are mostly focused in a few large sectors, it's not like we don't know where they are.  We start auditing the paperwork at large agricultural companies, at large hotel chains, large meat plants, and so forth.  That would catch most of the big fish right away.  Then we also need to change the penalties.  Right now it is a slap on the wrist.  We need penalties that hurt the stock price.  Criminal penalties against individuals in charge wouldn't be bad either.  We need penalties that are a proper deterrent - the current penalties are obviously not doing it.

Second, we need to improve the actual documents, and raise the diligence stardards for HR people.  Thousands/millions of illegal laborers are using fake/stolen SS cards.  All too often this is a wink/nod deal with the employer.  We need central control on SS cards, and we need the HR folks to actually check each employer.  Again, not hard - the infrastructure is mostly there already.

This would be cheaper and more effective than a giant penis - I mean fence.

brihard wrote: The integrity of the border (both borders) is critical to national security. I don't begrudge a nation trying to protect its sovereignty. Good fences make good neighbours.

I agree with this and the rest of your post, particularly regarding tech tie-ins.  Clearly we don't want just another "dumb" fence.  We can do better than that.

But I keep coming back to illegal immigration and national security as two different issues.  You want a fence to protect ourselves from the evil furreigners?  Fine.  But it won't stop illegal immigration - not without local action as well.

More importantly, it fails to address the more serious concern that our immigration laws, as they stand today, are flat out bad for us.  I would argue that simply locking out Mexicans would not fix anything - it would aggravate things.  We need to change the rules to allow a LOT more Mexicans (and others) into the country legally if we want to stay economically competitive on a global scale.

We are sitting right next to a giant pot of eager laborers, and we are trying to lock them out.  Adam Smith would roll over in his grave.  We should be taking advantage of the situation, not trying to stop it.

Hard to disagree with that.

My point is that while this fence will affect each of those issues (and others), its effect on illegal immigration will be relatively minor, IMO.  And (a) to the extent that the fence is being sold as a major step to curb illegal immigration it is misleading, and (b) there are much better ways to deal with illegal immigration if we are serious about doing so.

Heck, even the Minuteman guy agreed (on Colbert) that a fence was a poor second choice.  He also favors internal enforcement as a better way.

brihard wrote: Speaking of that, Clark, now that it's been a number of months since their campaign, have any final figures come down on just what the effects on illegal immigration were of the Minuteman program? I'm curious whether hard numbers have been developed. I remember the massive screaming about them being vigilantes who were going to hunt down and shoot immigrants... There's been a rather amusing silence since then.

Excellent question.

Prompted by this, I did a little snooping, and couldn't find anything easily.  I think we can probably conclude from this that there were no major Minuteman shootouts.  Harder to conclude, however, what impact the project has had on border issues generally.

The Minutemen have clearly made positive contributions elsewhere in the country, however.  In the Eastern States they have worked at pointing immigration officials towards employers that employ illegals.

oldsoldier wrote: We could creat a massive government entity... Would give great numbers of Americans excellant government jobs, great wages and wonderfull benifits.

Which would be paid for with either massive debt increases or massive tax increases.

I thought we wanted to shrink government?  Why are we suddenly adding another massive government entity?

oldsoldier wrote: Clark......it was sarcasm, wakey, wakey

Whew!

;)