# Time For The Fence Along The Border **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 21, 2006, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640 "2006-05-21T16:20:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/101 "2006-05-24T18:00:32Z")
[QUOTE=randyjet] I wish that such measures were not needed since it may well cut off the river from legitimate uses which I do enjoy. [/quote] It’s not needed, and it’s a stupid waste of resources. [QUOTE=randyjet] Such numbers do make that expenditure worth it, and not to mention the fact of 9/11 which also makes it imperative to seal the border to illegal entries. [/quote] Assuming we succeeded in keeping the illegal immigrants out, we’d only screw ourselves by doing so. And this won’t keep a single terrorist out; I doubt it’ll even inconvienence them. If it did, the Republicans would hardly support a fence; terrorism is to their political benefit. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/102 "2006-05-24T18:07:38Z")
[QUOTE=randyjet] I wish that such measures were not needed since it may well cut off the river from legitimate uses which I do enjoy. [/QUOTE] What “legitimate uses”? What, really, is the Rio Grande good for? Isn’t it dry or mud most of the year? Can anyone use it for fishing, boating, or irrigation? ---
**Author:** ![Unregistered\_Bull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3da27b/32.png) [@Unregistered\_Bull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unregistered_Bull)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/103 "2006-05-24T18:29:55Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] What “legitimate uses”? What, really, is the Rio Grande good for? Isn’t it dry or mud most of the year? Can anyone use it for fishing, boating, or irrigation? [/QUOTE] Lake Amistad, Big Bend National Park, birding, wild life refuge, irrigation [http://water.usgs.gov/nasqan/progdocs/factsheets/riogfact/engl.html](http://water.usgs.gov/nasqan/progdocs/factsheets/riogfact/engl.html) [http://www.worldbirdingcenter.org/](http://www.worldbirdingcenter.org/) [http://www.cerc.usgs.gov/pubs/riogrande/content2.htm](http://www.cerc.usgs.gov/pubs/riogrande/content2.htm) [http://www.awra.org/news/0603drought\_watch.pdf](http://www.awra.org/news/0603drought_watch.pdf) \*PDF > **[Amistad National Recreation Area (U.S. National Park Service)](https://www.nps.gov/amis/index.htm)** > > Amistad National Recreation Area And of course, it’s Mexico’s Rio Bravo as well and subject to various treaties. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/104 "2006-05-24T18:34:59Z")
[QUOTE=Unregistered Bull] Lake Amistad, Big Bend National Park, birding, wild life refuge, irrigation [http://water.usgs.gov/nasqan/progdocs/factsheets/riogfact/engl.html](http://water.usgs.gov/nasqan/progdocs/factsheets/riogfact/engl.html) [http://www.worldbirdingcenter.org/](http://www.worldbirdingcenter.org/) [http://www.cerc.usgs.gov/pubs/riogrande/content2.htm](http://www.cerc.usgs.gov/pubs/riogrande/content2.htm) [http://www.awra.org/news/0603drought\_watch.pdf](http://www.awra.org/news/0603drought_watch.pdf) \*PDF > **[Amistad National Recreation Area (U.S. National Park Service)](https://www.nps.gov/amis/index.htm)** > > Amistad National Recreation Area And of course, it’s Mexico’s Rio Bravo as well and subject to various treaties. [/QUOTE] And would a fence interfere with any of these? ---
**Author:** ![Unregistered\_Bull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3da27b/32.png) [@Unregistered\_Bull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unregistered_Bull)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/105 "2006-05-24T18:35:08Z")
[QUOTE=Unregistered Bull] Lake Amistad, Big Bend National Park, birding, wild life refuge, irrigation [http://water.usgs.gov/nasqan/progdocs/factsheets/riogfact/engl.html](http://water.usgs.gov/nasqan/progdocs/factsheets/riogfact/engl.html) [http://www.worldbirdingcenter.org/](http://www.worldbirdingcenter.org/) [http://www.cerc.usgs.gov/pubs/riogrande/content2.htm](http://www.cerc.usgs.gov/pubs/riogrande/content2.htm) [http://www.awra.org/news/0603drought\_watch.pdf](http://www.awra.org/news/0603drought_watch.pdf) \*PDF > **[Amistad National Recreation Area (U.S. National Park Service)](https://www.nps.gov/amis/index.htm)** > > Amistad National Recreation Area And of course, it’s Mexico’s Rio Bravo as well and subject to various treaties. [/QUOTE] [http://www.riograndeadventures.com/](http://www.riograndeadventures.com/) a little more recreation. ---
**Author:** ![Unregistered\_Bull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3da27b/32.png) [@Unregistered\_Bull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unregistered_Bull)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/106 "2006-05-24T18:36:54Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] And would a fence interfere with any of these? [/QUOTE] 😕 Does a bear shit in the woods? Of course. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/107 "2006-05-24T20:36:23Z")
[QUOTE=Unregistered Bull] 😕 Does a bear shit in the woods? Of course. [/QUOTE] I think he meant the treaties, rather than the activities. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/108 "2006-05-24T20:51:33Z")
We’ve all seen the inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty: Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door. It doesn’t say: We want your doctors, your educated workforce, your rich folk too, Your people come into our country on our terms alone. If we don’t want em, they’ll sit in line for-seemingly-ever. Poor people that don’t speak our language are icky: Build walls to keep us safe from “them”. Long story short, if someone wants to be here, they have the right to be here. If they want to come to this country to pursue the American way of life, they have all the right in the world to. Who are we to refuse people that want to come to our home to make life better for themselves and their families? If your complaint is with how “they” tax the system, isn’t that an indicator that the system needs to change? If your complaint is about how they don’t speak English, shouldn’t you and your church groups volunteer to spread English literacy and work to make their children bilingual products of a rapidly improving public school system? If your problem is that they’re brown, then you’re simply a bigot. Of course, you’ve got all the right to do/say/feel such things, but you are wrong for doing so. Such feelings run contrary to the purpose of a Liberal Democracy, something that we (supposedly) are. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/109 "2006-05-24T21:55:45Z")
[QUOTE=Least Original User Name Ever] It doesn’t say: [/QUOTE] Well, as a strict constructionalist, I’m confident that’s what they **MEANT**. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/110 "2006-05-24T22:30:12Z")
[QUOTE=Merijeek] Well, as a strict constructionalist, I’m confident that’s what they **MEANT**. -Joe [/QUOTE] I’m not. And debate rages as normal! But seriously, though. That’s speaking for the Constitution, not for something that isn’t a “living document” and isn’t supposed to change. The inscription on the Statue of Liberty is something like a mission statement, a declaration of who we are as a people and society, and what we’re like to people coming into this country or people that want to come in. In all that time, it hasn’t changed one bit. You cut out the immigration or make it less than completely open, you lose who we are as asociety. You lose our history. You take us down a path that, looking at our history as a guide, we weren’t supposed to go down. At the end of that path could lie xenophobia, nationalism, and fear. I prefer the path that we were founded upon. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/111 "2006-05-24T22:53:17Z")
[QUOTE=Least Original User Name Ever] You cut out the immigration or make it less than completely open, you lose who we are as asociety. You lose our history. You take us down a path that, looking at our history as a guide, we weren’t supposed to go down. At the end of that path could lie xenophobia, nationalism, and fear. I prefer the path that we were founded upon. [/QUOTE] Ermm . . . Look, you really need to take a closer look at the kind of country this was in 1789 and for a long time after. > [@](#): > > Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Compexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind. – Benjamin Franklin. [http://bc.barnard.columbia.edu/~lgordis/earlyAC/documents/observations.html](http://bc.barnard.columbia.edu/~lgordis/earlyAC/documents/observations.html) What can you say about a man for whom Swedes aren’t white enough? And compared with the other Founding Fathers, Franklin was a **liberal.** ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/112 "2006-05-24T23:05:38Z")
[QUOTE=Least Original User Name Ever] But seriously, though. That’s speaking for the Constitution, not for something that isn’t a “living document” and isn’t supposed to change. The inscription on the Statue of Liberty is something like a mission statement, a declaration of who we are as a people and society, and what we’re like to people coming into this country or people that want to come in. In all that time, it hasn’t changed one bit. [/QUOTE] Who says the sentiment on the statue isn’t supposed to change? That’s ridiculous. Don’t you think it was written that it took into accout the times in which it was writtten? A time when America was booming and the western US was just beginning to be populated? Don’t you think all that affected the thinking having to do with immigration? [QUOTE=Least Original User Name Ever] You cut out the immigration or make it less than completely open, you lose who we are as asociety. You lose our history. You take us down a path that, looking at our history as a guide, we weren’t supposed to go down. [/QUOTE] Oh, come on. This is just nonsense. Any country has the right—make that, obligation—to craft their immigration policy in a way that it would most benefit them. And that will change over time. There will be times when they benefit from a very open (encouraging) policy, and times when it will behoove them to curtail immigration. And numbers alone aren’t the only way for them to tweak things. There are times we might want engineers and highly skilled workers, and times when we want less skilled workers for more menial labor. Followiing your thinking, we would NEVER be able to change our immigration policy. So 100 years from now when we are overcrowded, we still have to let the teeming masses in. And if unenployment is 12%, so what keep 'em coming. Emma Lazarus said so. [QUOTE=Least Original User Name Ever] At the end of that path could lie xenophobia, nationalism, and fear. [/QUOTE] Ah, the old slippery slope dodge… [QUOTE=Least Original User Name Ever] I prefer the path that we were founded upon. [/QUOTE] What does a poem by _The New Colossus_ have to do with the Founders? Or the Founding documents? ---
**Author:** ![randyjet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ccd318/32.png) [@randyjet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/randyjet)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/113 "2006-05-24T23:12:25Z")
[QUOTE=Least Original User Name Ever] I’m not. And debate rages as normal! But seriously, though. That’s speaking for the Constitution, not for something that isn’t a “living document” and isn’t supposed to change. The inscription on the Statue of Liberty is something like a mission statement, a declaration of who we are as a people and society, and what we’re like to people coming into this country or people that want to come in. In all that time, it hasn’t changed one bit. You cut out the immigration or make it less than completely open, you lose who we are as asociety. You lose our history. You take us down a path that, looking at our history as a guide, we weren’t supposed to go down. I see that you have no idea of American history. When we began, my ancestors started out by lynching a number of Tories to encourage the rest of the SOBs to leave. WE then took their property and re-distributed it to the loyal Americans. Tens of thousands of the traitors left and we also had restricted immigration at the time as well. If you look at the US Constitution is it part of it from the git go especially as regards blacks. We had even in the great immigration waves a restricted policy of who could come in. I would suggest you go to Ellis Island. On the west coast the Chinese and Japanese were restricted in who could come over as well. The whole point of Ellis Island was to screen out those who were sick, criminals, mentally unbalanced etc… I don’t mind if you are so free with your home and money, but I do get upset when you take mine for others use. If I don’t get employed soon, I will need your address so you can take me in. I am an actual US citizen and Vietnam era veteran, so I sure as hell have a greater claim on you than any illegal does. At the end of that path could lie xenophobia, nationalism, and fear. I have no problem with nationalism or patriotism. Could you please explain to me what the problem is with patriotism? I can see the problem with jingoism, but again you confuse one with the other. Fear is not so bad either when it is reality based. That is a Darwinian survival instinct that we need to survive. Irrational fears are another matter. When Mr. Gutierrez says we have to kill all the Gringos, I for some funny reason take that as a threat. He is the founding member of MECHA and was not expelled for his statements in that regard. Would you consider that xenophobia? Or is it only Anglos who can have it? I guess you feel that people of color should not be held to the same standards as the rest of the US citizenry. That is in fact racism in its raw form, to say that those of color must be granted special consideration since they cannot meet the standards of the rest of the people. I prefer the path that we were founded upon. [/QUOTE] I too prefer the path of allowing a reasonable number of folks to immigrate into the US. My formula would be to allow a quota based on the racial makeup of the current legal population of the US. I think that would be a fair way of allocating the limited slots. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/114 "2006-05-24T23:24:50Z")
[QUOTE=randyjet] My formula would be to allow a quota based on the racial makeup of the current legal population of the US. [/QUOTE] :dubious: We had such a system from 1924 to 1965. [Immigration Act of 1924 - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924) It was flatly and frankly racist legislation. Its avowed purpose was to preserve America’s character as a white and predominantly Northwest-European country. It was abolished in 1965 in recognition of this. What reason do you see to revisit that decision now? ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/115 "2006-05-24T23:50:57Z")
[QUOTE=randyjet] My formula would be to allow a quota based on the racial makeup of the current legal population of the US. I think that would be a fair way of allocating the limited slots. [/QUOTE] Racial makeup? You should have started there and saved us a lot of time and effort. ---
**Author:** ![holmes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e95f7d/32.png) [@holmes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/holmes)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/116 "2006-05-25T00:04:18Z")
[QUOTE=randyjet] I too prefer the path of allowing a reasonable number of folks to immigrate into the US. My formula would be to allow a quota based on the racial makeup of the current legal population of the US. I think that would be a fair way of allocating the limited slots. [/QUOTE] You are aware that Middle Easterners, East Asians, North Africans and other “races” are considered part of the “white race”, right? Or do you mean skin color, when you refer to “race”? ---
**Author:** ![Unregistered\_Bull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3da27b/32.png) [@Unregistered\_Bull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unregistered_Bull)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/117 "2006-05-25T00:09:46Z")
[QUOTE=holmes] You are aware that Middle Easterners, East Asians, North Africans and other “races” are considered part of the “white race”, right? Or do you mean skin color, when you refer to “race”? [/QUOTE] You forgot the biggest bugaboo, Mexicans. ---
**Author:** ![holmes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e95f7d/32.png) [@holmes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/holmes)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/118 "2006-05-25T00:15:14Z")
[QUOTE=Unregistered Bull] You forgot the biggest bugaboo, Mexicans. [/QUOTE] Yeah, but I figured our OP would consider them part of the “hispanic” race… ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/119 "2006-05-25T00:33:51Z")
[QUOTE=randyjet] I too prefer the path of allowing a reasonable number of folks to immigrate into the US. My formula would be to allow a quota based on the racial makeup of the current legal population of the US. I think that would be a fair way of allocating the limited slots. [/QUOTE] This is utterly repulsive. ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640/120 "2006-05-25T01:23:41Z")
[QUOTE=magellan01] Who says the sentiment on the statue isn’t supposed to change? That’s ridiculous. Don’t you think it was written that it took into accout the times in which it was writtten? A time when America was booming and the western US was just beginning to be populated? Don’t you think all that affected the thinking having to do with immigration? Oh, come on. This is just nonsense. Any country has the right—make that, obligation—to craft their immigration policy in a way that it would most benefit them. And that will change over time. There will be times when they benefit from a very open (encouraging) policy, and times when it will behoove them to curtail immigration. And numbers alone aren’t the only way for them to tweak things. There are times we might want engineers and highly skilled workers, and times when we want less skilled workers for more menial labor. Followiing your thinking, we would NEVER be able to change our immigration policy. So 100 years from now when we are overcrowded, we still have to let the teeming masses in. And if unenployment is 12%, so what keep 'em coming. Emma Lazarus said so. Ah, the old slippery slope dodge… What does a poem by _The New Colossus_ have to do with the Founders? Or the Founding documents? [/QUOTE] The sentiment hasn’t changed. We want more people in this country. Even the most super-Neocon would admit to this. The methods used to get into this country are what they care about. It’s about controlling who/what comes into this country to them. I heard Charles Krauthammer on NPR a couple days ago say that if/when they seal up the border, they’d look to admit more people in through the “legal” methods. Additionally, the ones that got into this country through the border (I’d assume he’s talking about Mexican people that got in, not anyone that got in illegally) would, from that point forward, be legal US citizens. Our position in this country is an odd and unique one. I can’t say that other countries would do the same thing in regards to illegal immigration. No other country seems to have a situation quite like ours (to my knowledge). Even though the world population is growing, people can’t just be manufactured. We need people. Every country needs people. If people want to be here no matter what, who are we to say they can’t come in? Yes, I’m aware that if we were to suddenly get a million extra third-world people come into the country tomorrow, that means that they’re stereotypically of low education and unskilled. This means that jobs get a little harder to find for our unskilled and low educated people. To ruminate about such a situation is almost useless, for nothing like it would ever realistically happen. But if it did, it would suck for the people in our country to get better jobs/skills, but that’s why our education system should be able to tackle it. Of course, that’s all nice and hypothetical. We’re also not an overcrowded country. We’ve got a decent amount of room left, but I don’t know if it’s concievable to say that it’s possible to suffer from overcrowding. I know there are a whole lot of people in India and that it’s a smaller country than the US. Would that be our model of an overcrowded country? In order to have this scenario, there’d have to be an inordinant amount of people that would want to pick up everything and come here. Forgive the rambling, I’m just trying to grasp what the world would be like in this way. It’s not necessarily a slippery slope dodge I was trying to commit. That way, taken to its extreme would lead to those things. If that’s the definition of a slippery slope scenario, then so be it. If it is, then we can take it away and rework it so it’s at least not as slippery. Part of the immigration problem is how easy it is for illegal people to come in through Mexico if they want to and how (relatively) hard it is for people who want to get in. This is a bad thing and, if anything, should be the opposite way. I think people should be able to come into this country if they want to, but ideally, they’d have their presence known (through a border station, a website, a phone number, etc.). 100 years from now, if our system still has the same flaws it has now, the flaws that are being exploited and exposed for everyone to see and for nobody to do anything about, then we’d deserve to have 12% unemployment. As it stands now, the people in charge have the berth to get this fixed, although there is an uncercurrent of bigotry and racism that pollutes this problem, like most immigration problems (I’d think) would have. I believe that the Founders wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with immigration. You can point to the fact that they had the wilderness to populate in our country’s early stages and how we needed people to tame it, but even now, I have a hard time thinking that most of them wouldn’t be for at least fixing the immigration to make it easier for all people to get in. For the record, I hate the quota idea. Quotas, especially for things of this nature, never turn out good. Would the obligation to stem immigration, in your mind **magellan01** , be kind of like a protective tariff on people? I’m not trying to marginalize your position, just understand it. gotta throw that caveat in there to make sure nobody gets the war paint on [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-for-the-fence-along-the-border/357640.md?page=7)