Aw, now he might have to actually read it! That’s so mean.
You don’t want that. Sure, you can pretty much close a border that way. North Korea and East Germany have shown that. But for a country that prides itself to be the “cradle of freedom” these two are pretty bad role models.
You also should not fool yourself to believe that the threat of getting shot was an effective deterrent, so that you would not have to actually shoot. Over here in Europe immigrants from Africa keep trying to cross the Mediterranean in vast numbers, even though they are drowning by the thousands. That is bad enough as it is, but imagine it was your border guards actively killing that many people each year. It won’t happen, because you are not that kind of nation and you sure as hell do not want to be.
Fair enough. I missed that it included legal as well as illegal. However, it still doesn’t mean anything since there aren’t reliable numbers on this.
We can’t even agree on how many are in the US. The government admits 11 million, I’ve seen good arguments that the real number is closer to 30 million. There’s certainly no way to determine as a percentage what amount of the prison population they are.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they commit less petty crimes, so as to not get picked up by law enforcement and be deported. But just based on the demographics (poverty and less education) they are certainly more likely to be criminals then citizens (legal or otherwise).
North Korea and East Germany closed the borders so that people don’t get out. The suggestion was to close the border so that people don’t get in. There’s the difference.
So you’re saying if it had been West Germany who shot the fugitives that would have been ok?
Shooting anyone is not ok. Trying to get into the United States is not a capital crime.
Stoll, controlling your borders, and making every effort to catch anyone that tries to sneak in and deporting them is the basic rule of sovereignty. With modern technology, it is quite possible to do that. Yet it is not done.
I agree. I am not opposed to any country trying to keep control over their borders. It was just the “shoot them all” approach that irked me.
To what extent the more reasonable methods have been exhausted I cannot say. Could it be that doing more would simply be so expensive that it just is not worth it?
Well, let’s do back-of-the-napkin figuring: US-Mexican border is something like 1900 miles long. Let’s say about 900 miles of it is in such desolate regions that the average of 1 person per mile is probably enough to control the rare attempts at crossing, if there is electronic monitoring of the border there. So, for the remaining 1000 miles, how many BP agents per mile are needed to close the border tight? 10? That’s one per 500 or so yards, in three shifts. There are 20,000 BP agents. Yes, there are quite a few who man crossings etc. So you would have to increase the number, maybe another 3-4 thousand. Possible? Definitely.
We already have a huge and very expensive military that is located all over the world. Bring some of them home and put them on the border. That would probably save money.
There are 20,000 BP agents already? Wow!
I am quite unfamiliar with the situation on the US/Mexico border (as I am sure you can tell). My “wisdom” mostly comes from observing the situation between Europe and Africa. To what extent the two are comparable I cannot know for sure, but I believe there may be some parallels. What I observe over here is that the overall desire to migrate into Europe is a very strong driving force. People are willing to suffer extreme danger and hardship in search of the better life they are hoping to find in Europe. All attempts to throttle the flow have proven ineffective so far. People are adaptable - if one alley closes, they find another. Even a six meter high razor wire topped guarded border fence has not stopped some of them from making it from Morocco into Spanish Melilla.
As I said: It may well be that your situation over there is a little different. But I doubt that you will be able to *completely *close a border this long. Each extra dollar you invest for that purpose may help to get it a little tighter - but each extra dollar will also be a little less effective than the one before.
. . . Cite?
18,000 of those are already on the US-Mexico border.
Ok. So - to go back to my numbers, on the crossable parts of the border that would be what 18 per mile - 6 per mile if you’re running three shifts? One per 300 yards. And they cannot stop the infiltrators?
I don’t know. I’ve never been to the Mexican border, but I think you are grossly underestimating the numbers required to staff the official crossings.
Instead of cutting another 40,000 troops from the Army maybe they could put some on the border.
Maybe if we addressed the root cause of illegal immigration, we wouldn’t need a fence.
Or if we enforced the immigration laws that we have. Hell, even if we just enforced them since the Amnesty of 1986.
I feel compelled to point out that Obama has deported more illegal immigrants than any other president in recent history and yet you still refuse to give him any credit for it.
The root cause is poverty in other countries. What are we supposed to do about that?
I’ve never voted for Obama, and I’ve been quite critical of him. But, sure, I’ll give him credit for being better than W on immigration. That’s not saying much, but there you go.
It’s very disturbing that only Donald Fucking Trump is making sense on immigration out of all the candidates on both sides right now. If this keeps up I might have to vote for that jackass.