Comments on: The Incredible Shrinking Border Fence

By: Headline Summaries: Border Security at Traction Control

Headline Summaries: Border Security at Traction Control — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 03:35:42 +0000

[...] The Incredible Shrinking Border Fence [...]

By: Tantor

Tantor — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 12:42:34 +0000

The America of 1987 does not exist now in 2007, as illustrated by this Internet we’re writing on. America is always changing. We just need to make the changes in our best interest.

By: Ugly

Ugly — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 09:33:20 +0000

I’m afraid what I’m about to say is true:

The America of 2007 will no longer exist in 2027.

By: EricPWJohnson

EricPWJohnson — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 05:18:26 +0000

Again choice criticism but no offer of what Michelle would do. Good points, well taken, but sitting on the fence and just saying illegal immigration is wrong is really being disengenious. The problem is routed in the Civil War, the 14th amendment, the democrats, somehow blaming the only president who has tried to clean up 175 years of lax border security seems to me to be whining.

By: Entelechy

Entelechy — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 03:36:59 +0000

Tomorrow is the one year anniversary since the marches with the Mexican flags, the ones which really made friends of the Americans…

200,000 are expected to march in LA tomorrow to commemorate the first round, this time with American and Mexican flags. Once again, I believe this number is media-inflated. We’ll see.

By: Oilpatcher

Oilpatcher — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 02:11:20 +0000

Don’t bother with a fence unless you are prepared to have 24/7 high-tech survelliance activating remotely controlled automatic weapons on search and traverse.
What is actually practical is to barricade against vehicular entry. This requires a wide (50 to 100 yards) neutral zone on each side of the border. But the barricade itself is easy as pie with concrete barriers, 55 gallon drums filled with sand, engineering stakes and the like. When vehicles cannot get through, foot traffic becomes much easier to handle.

Leave discernable footpaths through the barricades. That way you will know where they will try to cross. Hopefully into the waiting arms of the Border Patrol. Plus, the border county Sheriffs should be given cash grants to raise posses that act as “linebacker” to the Border Patrol.

Set up tent city dentention centers for those apprehended. For the most part, continue with catch and release, but with two differences. No release until they are screened for terrorist/criminal connections, something that may take 30 to 45 days, and they will be released in SOUTHERN Mexico.

All of this will minimize illegal entry to the maximum extent possible unless and until lethal force is called for.

By: see-dubya

see-dubya — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 02:04:36 +0000

A “massive increase in legal immigration” (one of the bypridcuts of the Flake bill) would be fine by me IF it were a consequence of enforcing real immigration laws. In fact it would be pretty much an inevitable byproduct of any serious enforcement effort. We need more labor than we have willing hands, and I don’t mind bringing people in to do it.

I just want them legal and in the system, both for our protection and for theirs.

By: Yakko77

Yakko77 — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 01:25:05 +0000

Tantor, the fence is only a part of the solution, it's not the solution all by itself. Also, O'Reilly has been hitting hard on those two teenage girls killed by a illegal immigrant in Virginia (in a sanctuary city no less). For more on the human cost of illegal immigration check this site, Immigrations Human Cost

By: Tantor

Tantor — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 00:57:02 +0000

I hate to disagree with my beloved conservative goddess Michelle, but I’m not sold on the Big Border Fence, which is likely to become a Big White Elephant. Fences are too easy to defeat. I don’t see how building a 2000 mile long Maginot Line against immigrants will work. The Great Wall of China didn’t keep the Mongols out.

There are too many ways to go through it, over it, around it, under it. The Mongols bribed their way through. I don’t have any confidence that the government will adequately maintain a two thousand mile long fence, either. As Patton said, fixed fortifications are monuments to man’s stupidity. They are easily overcome.

The main problem with a fence is that it is a passive defense. America is better served with active measures. The American demand for cheap labor from south of the border is going to pull immigrants across the border. We need to regulate it, to capture it, and control it. We should require immigrants to all have a special guest worker ID card so that we can track and tax their labor and their contacts with social services. We can’t control what we can’t monitor and measure. Make it more attractive to work within the law than outside of it.

This program would also cull out the criminals and ne’er do wells. Immigrants who commit crimes or make themselves undesirable could have their ID pulled so that they can’t get a job, get insurance, buy a home, drive a car legally until they’re deported. If a guest worker keeps his nose clean for ten years, has a decent job, can speak English, and can pass a citizenship test, grant him/her American citizen. It’s better to get immigrants from the semi-sane countries south of the border than from the insane Middle East.

By: PinkyBigglesworth

PinkyBigglesworth — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 00:49:35 +0000

This issue is NOT going away…… unless you want to give up your county?

By: Drtuddle

Drtuddle — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 00:03:57 +0000

I didn’t come across this Vent it came across me

By: Kini

Kini — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 23:31:04 +0000

Perhaps we can have a force field put up along the border.

Did you know the Titanic was carrying several tons of mayonnaise when it sank. It was Cinko De Mayo !

By: Kini

Kini — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 23:30:40 +0000

Perhaps we can have a force field put up alone the border.

Did you know the Titanic was carrying several tons of mayonnaise when it sank. It was Cinko De Mayo !

By: The Political Border Fence « Utah Rattler

The Political Border Fence « Utah Rattler — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 22:52:55 +0000

[...] Well, the election is over. Instead of 700 miles, it appears that 370 miles is sufficient but only if DHS deems it so. Now DHS has full discretion if funds allocated to the paltry 370 miles are even used for a fence (Hot Air also has a ‘Vent’ about this). [...]

By: Yakko77

Yakko77 — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 22:49:23 +0000

Conservative candidates MUST do well in ‘08 otherwise I don’t know how much more this nation can take before we’re the United States of America in name only let alone the fence.

By: The False Dervish

The False Dervish — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 22:13:08 +0000

AND WE SHOULD BE PAYING ATTENTION TO OUR NORTHERN BORDERS, TOO!

By: The False Dervish

The False Dervish — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 22:11:54 +0000

By now, this stuff SHOULD NOT surprise us, my brother and sister commentators. As I have constantly posted here, Pres Bush IS AN OPEN BORDERS KIND OF GUY! He loves Mexico to much to be serious about border security. Remember those Bush Pesos that were posted here on Hot Air last year? There is a reason for their existence! The sovereignity of the USA is slowly being erroded by the Pres and our civil self-servants concerning our borders, our immigration laws, and God knows what else!

By: RedinBlueCounty

RedinBlueCounty — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 21:28:26 +0000

That damn fence costs about as much as a modern highway. We should call it the Immigration Highway.

By: MirCat

MirCat — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 21:25:18 +0000

Trump could build it for less.

- The Cat

By: oakpack

oakpack — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 21:21:37 +0000

The fence was an election issue that bombed and nothing more.

By: NRA4Freedom

NRA4Freedom — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 20:37:48 +0000

This is part of the reason why the GOP is apparently on its way out…

By: Halley

Halley — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 20:37:23 +0000

This is the most inexplicable thing about our prez. One can always figure out the rationale behind his decisions, even when one disagrees, but not this. It goes against everything else he has stood for, especially on the war. History’s judgment will be interesting on this.

By: Romeo13

Romeo13 — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 20:00:44 +0000

Truly sad….

By: Kini

Kini — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 19:26:38 +0000

Would be funny if it wern’t so true.

By: locomotivebreath1901

locomotivebreath1901 — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 16:17:55 +0000

I hate the idea of refering to GW as ’shrub’, but he sure ain’t no tall oak. And that ‘hundred hour congress’ is the finest crop o bottom feeders I’ve seen this century.

But hey! Nancy is prostrate before the wahabis in arabia, so it’s all good.

Fred Thompson for president.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Dalton_Thompson