The specifics of the hypothetical wall have gotten more discussion in this thread in 24 hours than I expect the Trump administration has given it in two years.
Probably so, lol
Yeah you’re right,the first numbers I saw were not a reliable source, but Trump also wants to hire at least 15000 more, right now.
So it seems to me the plan is to have 2000 miles of wall with somewhere around 30000 staff to back it with.
If we assume 28,000 of those are doing other things at any given moment ( kind of high number) we’re still working with 1 per mile at the least.trafficked areas.
Given 5 people per five miles the only possible way to effectively secure that line is with a wall.
We’re still talking vastly greater numbers than you’ll see of police on most given stretches of road… I highly doubt you’d attempt speeding on a road with a cop every mile. It would in fact be hard to cross a road without getting nabbed if you had a cop every mile driving back and forth , let alone cross a wall.
Either way 30,000 staff to secure a 2000 mile wall is not what I would call unmanned.
We aren’t even considering national guard in there.
And either way it seems vastly over prioritized if not entirely unnecessary.
Richard Feynman’s experiences as a post doc working at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project should tell you most of what you need to know about National Security. Loved the fun and games at the entrance gate. I fail to see how the situation is any different today, tomorrow or any time. But, by all means piss the money and effort away instead of working on the root cause.
I’m still interested in your IR ideas. Can you elaborate?
I think if we want to discuss a purely hypothetical wall any further it belongs in another thread.
Huh? There’s no actual wall to discuss! It’s all hypothetical!
I’m bewildered by this comment.
I was walking along the border when I saw an oil lamp buried in the sand. I picked it up and rubbed it, and a genie popped out.
“IN THANKS FOR FREEING ME,” the genie rumbled, “I WILL GRANT YOU ONE WISH.”
“Cool!” I said. “I want a wall along the US-Mexico border, and it should be totally impassable by immigrants.”
“ARE YOU CRAZY?” the genie roared. “THERE ARE 2,000 MILES OF BORDER, AND ANY WALL THAT COULDN’T BE PASSED BY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WOULD HAVE TO BE A HUNDRED FEET HIGH. AND THAT’S NOT EVEN GETTING INTO THE LEGAL ISSUES OF IMMINENT DOMAIN, OR THE ENVIRONMENTAL HARM IT WOULD CAUSE. CHOOSE A DIFFERENT WISH!”
“Okay, fine. Let’s maybe get at the root cause. I wish for you to make Americans less racist.”
“SO ABOUT THAT WALL…”
I don’t see how you get even that level of staffing.
For a 24/7 operation, around 80% of your workforce is going to be off-duty at any given time (figure three eight-hour shifts per day x 7 days = 21 shifts per week; most people are going to be working about 5 of 21, plus workers off on annual leave, sick leave, jury duty, Nat’l Guard training, etc., etc.). With 30K, that gives you around 6K at any one time. The Border Patrol is typically running 6 to 10 percent below authorized levels because of their high turnover rate, which also means you have more new agents in training programs. Now we’re down to around 5,000 agents on duty, and in urban areas such as El Paso or San Diego, you can’t station them a mile apart because you have so little time (minutes or even seconds) before a border jumper can mingle with the crowds and escape. Then you have the agents assigned to other duties, such as running the checkpoints located up to 75 miles away from the border, looking for people and drugs who evaded detection at the border (by either bypassing a port of entry or by being smuggled through one). How many does that actually leave for the remote lands?
As the citation above notes, right now there are agents working whose nearest backup is 15 or 20 or more minutes away. Doubling the number of agents means the closest agent might be 7 to 10 minutes; getting four or five agents for a major bust might mean waiting an hour. (Then, whoever or whatever you caught has to be escorted back to a processing station, removing the escorts from active duty for however long it takes.)
I don’t know exactly how far in miles 7 or 10 or 20 minutes is, but given that most agents are in/on motorized conveyances of some sort, I’m going to assume it is more than a couple of miles.
If we’re not talking 5 people per 5 miles, though, but more like 5 people per 25 miles, or even 50, is the wall actually going to secure that line effectively? At that point, it really is essentially unmanned.
If that’s how it works out then no. It’s basically unmanned. You might get some effect at 5 per 20miles with combining other technology but it’s well on it’s way to making the wall itself an insignificant part of a security plan.
However, I think you could certainly concentrate many of the currently spread out agents more effectively along a wall.
It seems logical most or all of the Trump desired new 15k would likely be dedicated to it just guessing the request to add 15 k has something to do with it, which would likely be followed by further upping that number once it’s built.
We still aren’t accounting for national guard patrols.
As with all politicians it’s the give a mouse a cookie scenario.
I seriously doubt the plan is just a stupid wall.
As an aside why did the number of agents continue to rise so sharply under obama?
I don’t get how Littleman can admit the idea is ridiculously impractical and yet still try to suggest we’re being unreasonable by rejecting it.
If there is any actual plan at all at this point (and I’m not at all convinced that there is), I would not be surprised at all to learn that the plan is for nothing other than a single barrier wall. I’d be interested to see if there are any actual cites to the contrary.
One may recall that, several months ago, the administration publicized the fact that they were examining several different prototype designs for said wall.
If you touch it, it summons demons.
Yep, that’s kinda the point here.
The “plan” is ever-shifting; certainly at one point it really was just a stupid wall, a concrete monolith from the Pacific to the Gulf. Whether that is still the plan depends on what day it is and what kind of mood he’s in.
?? Border patrol agents by fiscal year, 1992-2017: the number of agents at year-end 2017 was slightly lower than in FY2009. The number of people crossing the border has declined sharply since 2000, and especially since the Great Recession; more illegal aliens arrive by airplane and overstay visas now.
As an aside, here is a photo of one of the Border Patrol’s rescue beacons in Tucson Sector. "Tell us you’re there and you need help, and we’ll try to get there in an hour or so."That is people ANNOUNCING their presence and staying in one spot to get rescued, and the Border Patrol still can’t promise to get somebody there quickly.
The agents staffing the wall–many of them are going to need to be in the middle of no-where, with nothing to do, nowhere for their families to live. How much do you think you’d have to pay people to get them to accept that sort of job posting?
Oh come on. It isn’t even that. It isn’t even a plan, and we all know it–those who have the slightest degree of critical thinking capacity. It has always been nothing more than a vapid slogan designed for simpletons. To debate on end like this about wall configurations or what-not is unbecoming
Have Wall proponents ever addressed the well-documented fact that Trump’s obsession with the Wall began only as an easy-to-remember campaign meme?
Great stories! The top Army officer at Los Alamos who was so pedantic about keeping documents locked in safes had the combination on his safe still set to the default factory setting.
And is it true that, regarding the Permissive Action Link codes used to prevent a Dr. Strangelove Jack D. Ripper scenario, “the US Air Force’s Strategic Air Command worried that in times of need the codes for the Minuteman ICBM force would not be available, so it quietly decided to set the codes to 00000000 in all missile launch control centers.”
Interesting point. And, judging by what I have read here and elsewhere, the border patrol has a problem recruiting enough people to do the work. And, the basic issue is that illegal aliens simply enter the USA legally and then overstay. But that does not make a fine dramatic image, Trump wants honest to God wetbacks.
If the Mexican border really is the problem (and I don’t think it is), then the only way to monitor it - I said monitor, not seal off - is to have a nominal fence to tell people where the border is and then put up sensors and video cameras. Assuming they all work as planned, then you need somebody in an official uniform to rush and help / apprehend the border crossers. Where from? Will they have helicopters on standby? Enough agents to round up a group?
If by any chance it dawns on Trump that there are millions of illegals already in his glorious country, is he planning to beef up “la migra” and run spot checks nationwide?
BTW on fences, a couple of years ago the Hungarian government decided to seal off its beloved land to keep out the illegals, mainly Syrians or Africans. I wish I had had the contract for the fencing, it must have been very lucrative even for eight-foot posts and suitable wire mesh. But did it work? I recall a picture of refugees tramping along a railway line, which of course was not closed off by the fence.
A lot of people do just that all the time for a starting salary of about $1300 mo. They call it the armed forces.
Actually since you guys brought up the cbps staffing issues I may just apply.
With the 15 yes I have now between army and DOD another 10 or 15 as a government employee would make my retirement worth a good chunk of change.
Especially if they have their own mechanics or something a little less LEO like
Lol now that would be a hell of a barrier. Pun intended.
What about a door? I got a dock with a fishing boat on the other side… do I get a door?
I also spent $9,000 clearing, graveling, and decorating a pathway which leads from my house, winds past the pool, and then proceeds past the gazebo to my Rio Grande boatdock. I demand the door be placed to best utilize my path.
In addition, I demand the wall be invisible because I didn’t spend $1.4m on a small 30-acre ranch with 400ft of RG access so some fucknut meth-addled hillbilly in Kentucky can feel better while stroking his cock with his revolver while watching InfoWars.
And, I’m sure, my other rich and influential neighbors will demand the same.