Just what does 'secure border' mean?

[Ed Barrow]

You wouldn't know it from the public debate, but the U.S.-Mexico border is more fortified now than it was even five years ago. Far more agents patrol it, more fences, barriers and technology protect it and taxpayers are spending billions more to reinforce it. Despite those efforts, calls for increased border security are elbowing out cries for an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws and inducing Congress and the administration to spend even more money on border enforcement.

Securing the border remains the prerequisite for any other immigration reforms. That leaves on hold any decision on whether border security might be improved by forcing illegal immigrants to come forward, get background checks and comply with other rules in exchange for legal status. Also pushed aside is any consideration of whether more visas for temporary foreign workers would reduce illegal immigration and make better use of law enforcement resources.

"Once we get the border secured, then we can support a lot of things," Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said earlier this month. "Until then, it's going to be very difficult."

That sentiment is shared by both Democrats and Republicans this election year. But border security is in the eye of the beholder. There's no agreed-on definition of what constitutes a secure border and no budget for how much more to spend to achieve it. Is it when the entire southern border of nearly 2,000 miles is fenced, or double-fenced? Is it when illegal immigration arrests are at zero or close to it? Is it when everyone who crosses the border can be identified? Is it when Army troops are sent to the border, as they were after Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa raided a New Mexico border town in 1916, or when the number of Border Patrol agents has quintupled?

The White House will lay out plans for more border reinforcements when administration officials meet with Gov. Jan Brewer in Arizona Monday. President Obama already has called for 1,200 National Guard troops in support roles, along with at least another $500 million for border security. For former President George W. Bush, the number of Guard troops was 6,000. A Texas congressman has said no fewer than about 25,000 will do the job.

"One of the questions I think we need to talk about is whether securing the border is ever going to be reached … in the sense of the Congress," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told members of a Senate committee at a hearing in April, "or whether that goal post is just going to keep moving."


http://azstarnet.com/article_3de41db7-4572-5e6c-90bf-ba82508c106d.html

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. How about a WPA effort kind of thing to build "Great Wall of China" #2

Really put some people to work!

[Cleita]

3. Yeah but we will probably have to hire immigrant labor to build it.

Oh the irony!

[The_Casual_Observer]

5. Imagine the loss of control right away of the contracts & the budget.

"Mr Chairman... we had no idea just how much was being spent & who was spending it"

[Cleita]

2. Yes, the Chinese thought they were going to keep the mongols out with

the Great Wall, yet one of them, the Kublai Kahn became their emperor. There is no such thing as a secure border. Even in literature, the impregnable walls of Troy were finally breeched with trickery. We really need more practical, common sense solutions to problems, like leaning on the aristocracy of those countries to improve the lot of their working class so they will want to stay home. Instead we prop up every dictator and every corrupt government who takes our money and stays out of the way of American enterprise in Latin America.

[Demeter]

4. It would be more credible If we leaned on our own "aristocracy" first

[Cleita]

7. Granted we need to practice what we preach. n/t

[Brozilla]

6. it means returning to rational immigration levels

something not seen in this nation since the 70s