PROMISES, PROMISES: Securing US border impossible

[Playinghardball]

Source: Sacramento Bee

AUSTIN, Texas -- Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have promised to complete a nearly 1,950-mile fence. Michele Bachmann wants a double fence. Ron Paul pledges to secure the nation's southern border by any means necessary, and Rick Perry says he can secure it without a fence - and do so within a year of taking office as president.

But a border that is sealed off to all illegal immigrants and drugs flowing north is a promise none of them could keep.

"Securing the border is a wonderful slogan, but that's pretty much all it is," said Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. "Even to come close would require measures that would make legal commerce with Mexico impossible. That's an enormous price for what would still be a very leaky system."

Perry, the longest-serving governor of a state that makes up roughly 65 percent of America's border with Mexico, already knows that. What he's actually pledging, clarifies spokeswoman Catherine Frazier, is achieving "operational control" of the border - defined by the U.S. Border Patrol as areas where it can detect, respond to and interdict illegal activity either at the border or after entry into the U.S.


Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/12/05/4102413/promises-promises-securing-us.html#ixzz1fmd0uQtZ

[LonePirate]

1. I'd like to know the impact of these fences on wildlife and the environment in general.

Racism should not be used as another excuse to destroy our planet, even if it is just a tiny segment of it.