Xeric wrote: 
Perhaps a system to allow day labor into the country legally ?  Oh, wait, we already have that.  A temporary worker visa program for aliens ?  Oh wait, we already have that. 

Or perhaps an open border to allow anyone to enter at will ?  Oh wait, we already have that.

Then we need to ban swimming pools and lettuce fields.  Cause if we didn't have any, they wouldn't come into the country.

Sounds similar to the need for oil causes the disasters to happen.

We can build and finish the fence before the debate about illegals is even close to being over.  So let's get busy and do something more than just talking.  Or we just buy up the ranches down on the border so the owners will no longer have to risk their lives just being there.  Let the government buy out the ranchers and turn their ranches into parks and rest stops for the weary invader traveler.

 kurtster wrote: 


*leaping in way over my head, historically speaking* Did we not conclude, as a country, that isolationism would not work and so we had to enter WWI? There is no question that the country is worth fighting for and defending. Nobody doubts that, despite what some on the political extremes might claim of those on the the other political extremes. The question—and it is a legitimate question, worthy of thoughtful debate—is whether builiding walls (physical, metaphorical, or both) is the best way to accomplish that defense.

 hippiechick wrote: 
He just makes excuses for not defending the border.  Securing the border is not about immigration, it is about securing the border from tresspassers, terrorists, smugglers and snipers.  Immigrants have legal access points for gaining entry into this country.  They are the same ones used by US citizens when they re-enter from a foreign land.

Either this country is worth protecting and defending or it isn't.  I believe it is worth the fight and expense as do most Americans.

 oldslabsides wrote: 
Remind me not to live next door to you.

I'm not sure that trying to cross the border illegally should be punishable by death. And if we're going to build a fence on the southern border, we need to do the same on the north.

 oldslabsides wrote: 


Might work. But to keep people from sneaking in to clean pools and to pick our lettuce? Seems a bit extreme to me. . . .

Frankly, I would rather see the money spent on education, training, job creation, and green development...but that's just me.

 Xeric wrote: 
How about one that's maintained, patrolled, manned and covered by fire and minefields?

 kurtster wrote: 
There are currently 20,000 border police. The Mexican border is 1,969 miles; do the math. (No really, you do the math, I don't do math.) This number came from Louis Gutiérrez, US Rep from Chicago and on the United State House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, etc

 Xeric wrote: 
Then we give up, because its not worth it ? 

A real border defended by our military will work.  Or how do we know if we never try ?

El Paso City Hall in Texas has been hit by bullets fired from across the border.  Isn't that reason enough to start trying to defend the border ?  We need real troops with real bullets on the border willing to start shooting back.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall. . . .

A physical fence—always scalable, dig-underable, fly-overable, maintenance-deprived, etc, etc, etc, will never do the job.  Trying to build one that will is throwing money down the rabbit hole.

All the talk about illegals is just talk.  Tail chasing elevated to an art form.

Until the fence is finished and the border is secured, non of the talk about illegals is relevant.  Just posing and posturing and ranting. 

Resolving the illegal problem in a comprehensive and real meaningful way starts with the fence.  Either we have an open or secure border, there is no in between.  An open border will keep the illegal debate open and unresolvable.

 musik_knut wrote: 
It could be a fair statement to say that this is a Red / Blue state thing.  Perhaps BHO is only President of the Blue States and Persecutor / Punisher of Red States.  There is no political advantage to helping states that don't support him. 

Where U.S.-Mexico border fence is tall, border crossings fall

In Yuma, Ariz., border patrol agents tout the success of a high
triple-and double-layered wall. But such a fence is unlikely to stretch the
entire border.

Apparently, the political will required to secure our borders does not at present exist.

 kurtster wrote: 

As Team Obama leans on Arizona, Rhode Island, which is among the leading States in reports to ICE, is not on their radar. While Team Obama files suit against Arizona, a State seeking to do to the letter what the Federal Government won't do, enforce Federal Laws, Team Obama seems to give a pass to 'sanctuary cities' that assist those who break US Laws.

Fence? First get an Executive who will seriously see that the laws are faithfully executed...and not on a pick n' choose basis *could it be that our current POTUS plays Blue State v. Red State, where Red will feel the full brunt of his team while Blue is given a free pass?*


Oh, and when building a fence...use razor wire atop and below; it makes scaling it by those intent on breaking US Laws, a more difficult task...

 kurtster wrote: 
Well there's your answer.

With Arizona being sued rather than helped in their time of need, the intentions of the Federal Government are obvious.  Mexican Drug Cartels have more influence in Washington than US citizens.  Maybe its something like so many people have to die before a stop light is installed at an intersection.  Maybe more Americans need to die before this problem is taken seriously.

Or all the open border supporters can go down to the border and serve as greeters to our country and tell everyone to get along and stop shooting.  That will fix things.

Either legalize drugs or bomb Mexico City in the middle of the night and install our own government there like in Iraq. Ouch Occam's razor is sharp! There's probably a lot of good reasons these ideas won't work.

 

Its time to separate controlling the border from the illegal immigrant debate.  The title is from a bumper sticker I proudly had on my previous vehicle for several years.

Securing the border is not about the illegal immigration problem, although it clearly makes that situation worse.  Worse things are going on, like an outright war and it is spilling over our porous southern border.  We are being attacked and invaded from south of the border by a business.  We can no longer politicize and polarize this issue.  Securing the border is of utmost importance.  It is a Constitutional Duty of the Federal Government.

Those who support open borders better take another look at what is going on. 

---

Shots fired in Mexico hit El Paso City Hall

Earlier that same day, 21 people were massacred in a gang fight 12 miles south of the Ariz. border

Investor's Business Daily

EL PASO, Tx. - In his speech last Thursday, President Obama assured us that our "southern border is more secure today than at any time in the past 20 years." So why is El Paso's City Hall taking fire from Mexico?

The president made his pitch for "comprehensive immigration reform" by assuring us problems on the border were already taken care of, so the next course of action was a modified amnesty program for 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.

But a funny thing happened on the same day he was urging Americans to go along: El Paso's City Hall found itself in a war zone as gunfire from the Mexican side from either traffickers or the Mexican lawmen trying to fight them pocked the edifice. News reports said as many as seven bullets hit the building. No one was hit — this time.

It's another sign of the horror in Mexico spilling onto the U.S. side.

Further down the border on the same day, 12 miles from Nogales, Ariz., 21 people were massacred in a fight between rival smuggling gangs over the right of way to bring their illegal immigrant "shipments" and narcotics into the U.S.

It all gives the president's assurances to Americans that the border situation is being dealt with an aura of unreality.

Statistics can be cut a number of ways, and some areas do have better border security. But the fact that it's uneven has left other areas — such as the Arizona border, more vulnerable as traffickers fight over the last remaining routes with intensity.

And dramatic events are happening across the border area anyway that suggest bottoms dropping out, with horrors unimaginable in the past becoming the new norm:   

The U.S. has lost control of actual U.S. territory to drug and migrant smugglers as much as 80 miles inland in Arizona. Any American who enters this area risks being shot dead.

The Falcon Dam on Texas' lower Rio Grande was targeted for destruction by a Mexican cartel to destroy a rival's drug and alien-smuggling route. Had the foiled plot succeeded, 4 million people could have ended up downriver with mass casualties and deaths.

Arizona now has the second-highest kidnapping rate in the world, behind only Mexico City, with nearly all of it due to drug and migrant smugglers and their quests for cash and territory.

Mass graves have been discovered in New Mexico, believed by lawmen to be the work of cartels.

Two U.S. border consulates have been attacked, and three people connected with them have been killed in the past three years.

In Washington state and others, national forests and Indian reservations have seen large swaths of land converted by cartels to drug cultivation operations guarded by illegal immigrants, making them also no-man's lands.

Now the Mexican shootout that hits a large U.S. city, and it's hard not to question how much urgency the White House has.

more

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Gunfire hitting City Hall prompts Texas AG to ask for more troops on border

Times staff reports Posted: 06/30/2010 01:59:31 PM MDT

EL PASO - Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today demanded that President Obama send more troops to the Texas-Mexico border and used the shots that hit El Paso City Hall as an example of increased violence on the border.

Abbott said in a letter that the seven shots that hit City Hall in El Paso were an example of the violence that is plaguing the border area and that sending 1,200 National Guard soldiers to the entire U.S.-Mexico border is not enough.

He also cited the violence in Juarez and said that Americans lives are at risk.

"More than 1,300 people have been murdered in Juárez this year as a war continues relentlessly between the Juárez and Sinaloa drug cartels," he told Obama.

He also said the "time for talk has passed."

Here is the letter by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott:

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

Deadly violence from drug cartels and transnational gangs in Mexico is knocking on the United States' door with ever increasing frequency.

Yesterday, gunfire from the cartels pierced that threshold and struck City Hall in El Paso. Fortunately no one was injured or killed. But that good fortune was not the result of effective border control - it was mere luck that the bullets struck buildings rather than bodies.

Luck and good fortune are not effective border enforcement policies. The shocking reality of cross border gunfire proves the cold reality: American lives are at risk. As the attached news article notes: "More than 1,300 people have been murdered in Juárez this year as a war continues relentlessly between the Juárez and Sinaloa drug cartels." Americans must be protected as this deadly war bulges at our border.

Law enforcement officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety and your own U.S. Customs and Border Protection will reveal the hard truth. Our state is under constant assault from illegal activity threatening a porous border.

The time for talk has passed. The time for action is now. The need is urgent. Each day that passes increases the likelihood that an American life will be lost because of the federal government's failure to secure the border.

This threat demands immediate and effective action by your Administration to secure our border. As the Attorney General of Texas, I urge you to make border security your top priority so that no more innocent lives are lost to border violence.

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 WTF is good about this ?

Funny how the MSM media ignored this ...