US Scraps Virtual Fence Along Mexican Border 437
Pickens writes "The Arizona Republic reports that the federal government has officially cancelled its multibillion-dollar plan to build a virtual fence along the border with Mexico as Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano disclosed in a congressional briefing that the program known as SBInet was costing too much and achieving too little. 'SBInet cannot meet its original objective of providing a single, integrated border-security technology solution,' says Napolitano. Boeing was hired in 2006 to develop the system under a three-year federal contract with cost projections for full build-out as high as $8 billion but efforts were plagued by delays, glitches, budget increases and congressional criticism. Napolitano has ordered Customs and Border Protection to launch a more modest and geographically tailored effort using SBInet funds and existing technology such as mobile-surveillance systems, unmanned aircraft, thermal-imaging devices and remote-video surveillance with proven elements of SBInet including stationary radar and infrared-sensor towers. SBInet cost nearly $1 billion for development along 53 miles of Arizona border."
Nebs! Nebs! (Score:2)
This is what you get for taking ideas from a comedy movie based on a bunch of TV skits.
More Boeing cancellations (Score:2)
I wonder if, given the rash of cancellations and scalebacks lately, this isn't about the programs so much as it is about Boeing?
Or is Boeing just that big and pervasive?
Re:More Boeing cancellations (Score:4, Informative)
It's not just Boeing. You've got Lockheed-Martin getting these kinds of technology contracts too. They (and Northrop-Grumman) are giant, generalized technology behemoths now, with no real identity. NG owns shipyards too now. I liked them all so much better when they were airplane companies.
Re:More Boeing cancellations (Score:4, Interesting)
Boeing is, as their own executives describe themselves, an 'honest broker' of engineering and management services. Aside from a very few core competencies (airframes, etc.) they subcontract or acquire the skills needed to complete a contract. So, they aren't as big as they seem. I mean, where was Boeing's e-fence division prior to this contract?
A couple of observations:
<chicago_mob_accent>
"If you want to do work in my territory, you've got to give me a piece of the action"
</chicago_mob_accent>.
Re: (Score:3)
Boeing. Lockheed, and the other major players know how to deal with the DHS and other government customers because they (the suppliers) have pushed for legislation to make the gov't procurement process a nightmare to deal with for anyone without office buildings full of lawyers.
Re: (Score:2)
"Well, lets see here: we could either hire some more guards and equip them with the sort of modestly-upgraded-versions-of-proven-technology that we know are up to the task of detecting people in a d
Re: (Score:3)
They don't want to hire more guards, there are no corporate profits in provide more government border agents. Think about 53 miles with with three shifts of guards spaced 100 yards apart, getting paid say $25,000 per year, that billion dollars would pay for 14 years worth of wildly excessive security.
They would loath that solution, corporate executives wouldn't get their multi million dollar bonuses, lobbyists wouldn't get their multi million dollar fees, politicians wouldn't get the multi million dollar
Re:More Boeing cancellations (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to question the math on this one. $25,000/year isn't very much considering that these people are going to be dealing with rugged terrain, harsh desert conditions, and facing violent, heavily armed drug smugglers and human traffickers. It sounds like we're not even factoring in any sort of benefits like health care or retirement. In short, you're offering minimal pay and benefits for dangerous, difficult work. The obvious solution, of course, is that we fill these positions by hiring illegal immigrants.
Re: (Score:3)
They will also be facing women, children, teens, people who just want better for themselves and their children.. All these solutions everyone is presenting (snipers, auto sentries, land mines) ignore the fact that these are people like us. You say hello to them as neighbors and when you are out shopping. Have we decided as a society that those who do not fit our ideal should just be "gotten rid" of? Our grandfathers fought a war against those who believed that.
The real issue is that they come here because
Re: (Score:3)
At the end of the day it is all rather mute. The real point is doing an appropriate cost benefit analysis, the presumed benefit being the prevention of an illegal immigrant crossing the border undetected versus the cost of preventing this from happening. This can of course be further extrapolated out to thousands of illegal border crossings the the actual true impact upon the security of the United States.
Obviously once politics and corporate greed take over, it is readily apparent any realistic analysis
The Virtual Fence was always a dumb idea (Score:2)
Maybe it would be good at counting illegals crossing but it does nothing to stop them.
When hundreds of thousands (literally) cross every year, we don't need sensors on the border. Just stand there and some are sure to cross your path.
Re:The Virtual Fence was always a dumb idea (Score:4, Funny)
You're right. The e-fence was no fence at all.
- What we need is some kind of wall to keep out non-citizens. I think the Chinese invented the idea 2500 years ago, when they wanted to stop immigrants from the north, so let's go negotiate with them to build it for us.
Re: (Score:2)
You're right. The e-fence was no fence at all. - What we need is some kind of wall to keep out non-citizens. I think the Chinese invented the idea 2500 years ago, when they wanted to stop immigrants from the north, so let's go negotiate with them to build it for us.
Made a pretty good tourist attraction though. Gotta think ahead!
Re:The Virtual Fence was always a dumb idea (Score:5, Funny)
Chinese invented the idea 2500 years ago
And, coincidentally, the patent is due to expire later this year!
Re:The Virtual Fence was always a dumb idea (Score:5, Funny)
I heard they were granted an extension for another 5 years, again.
Re: (Score:2)
Walls have Two Sides (Score:2)
What we need is some kind of wall to keep out non-citizens. I think the Chinese invented the idea 2500 years ago, when they wanted to stop immigrants from the north, so let's go negotiate with them to build it for us.
The East Germans have more modern experience. They were mostly successful in keeping those dirty Capitalists out with their wall. Yeah, that's the ticket, the Berlin Wall was built to keep the Mexicans, errr, the West Germans *out*. Yeah.
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe if you pitched it as a method to keep rednecks and fundamentalist crackpots IN, then the international community would probably think this was an amazing idea and fund the entire thing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Virtual Fence was always a dumb idea (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the problems with the Mexican drug lords and gangs (they're not really cartels), is that they're heavily armed. Armed by US citizens who (legally) buy guns and (illegally) sell them to Mexicans for a profit.
I read some statistics showing that almost all illegal guns in Mexico could be traced back to legally bought guns in the US, and we're not talking hunting rifles here.
My suggestion: Make it a felony to not be able to present any and all legally bought guns within 24 hours of the police requesting it, or to not report a lost gun in a timely manner, or to file a false report. Get the fuckers who arm the drug lords.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The Virtual Fence was always a dumb idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't leave it at home?
Or ensure that whoever you left it in the care of (family member, gun club...) can present it for you?
If you are unwilling to assume responsibility for a device intended solely to kill human beings, you shouldn't have one.
Re: (Score:2)
If you are unwilling to assume responsibility for a device intended solely to kill human beings, you shouldn't have one.
Hunting.
Re:The Virtual Fence was always a dumb idea (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are unwilling to assume responsibility for a device intended solely to kill human beings, you shouldn't have one.
Damn right. Guns' intended purpose, and therefore only purpose, is violence and murder. Just like torrent clients can only be used for piracy, jailbreaking can only be used for hacking, laser pointers can only be used for blinding people, and cough syrup can only be used for making crystal meth.
In fact, I shot three blind, meth-addled hipster pirates just on my morning commute yesterday.
Re: (Score:3)
I see what you're trying to do and I frankly agree with every example you gave... except for the guns.
What, exactly, is the non-violent purpose to guns that I am missing? Best as I can tell, their purpose is violence and murder. Sometimes it's with good intentions; shooting that burglar in the face protects your belongings and your family, but I would be hard pressed not to identify it as violent. Same thing with wars; sometimes they need to be fought, but they are violent in the extreme. Policemen sh
Re: (Score:3)
As long as the boundary between the local governments(whose security forces we are almost uniformly dumping guns and training on, some 'in-kind' some as 'foreign aid', with the exception of the ones too left wing for our taste) and the cartels remains extremely porous due to corruption, defection, and the like, we are going to c
Re:The Virtual Fence was always a dumb idea (Score:5, Informative)
actually, that's a lie made by certain BATF agents and aped by Obama, and some congressmen. The accurate statement is 90% of traceable guns that were submitted to the AFT were U.S. origin, and they were submitted because they were likely to be of U.S. origin. Most drug cartel guns in Mexico come from overseas black markets.
Also Fox News made a false statement, that 17% of the cartel guns were U.S. and the rest foreign. Figure might be twice that or more.
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/counting-mexicos-guns/ [factcheck.org]
Re: (Score:3)
The accurate statement is 90% of traceable guns that were submitted to the AFT were U.S. origin, and they were submitted because they were likely to be of U.S. origin.
Actually the part I emphasized in bold is incorrect also. From the FactCheck article you linked [factcheck.org] (emphasis mine):
Re: (Score:3)
Please have the courtesy of taking your time to read the article that both rubycodez and I linked. The same article that denies that 90% is the correct figure also says that the 17% figure presented by Fox News is also incorrect (not surprising, given the source).
They say that they do not have precise information on the total number of guns seized in Mexico in each year. But using the 29,000 figure used by Fox and others for 2007+2008, the actual percentage of guns proven to come from the US is between 34 a
Re: (Score:2)
Those particular stats are (intentionally) highly misleading.
They ignore the detail that only a tiny fraction of guns captured are traced. And that that tiny fraction does NOT include the AK-47's captured (illegal in the USA), or any other assault rifles (also generally illegal in the USA).
What you can easily buy in the USA to resell (illeg
Re: (Score:2)
What about guns bought as gifts?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Really? Americans sold them fully automatic AKs and hand grenades?
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_mmBw3uzPnJI/TDL6TdwOQuI/AAAAAAABaVU/B1QMkH2PuQw/s1600/weapons_of_mexican_drug_cartel_17.jpg [blogspot.com]
http://www.deseretnews.com/photos/midres/874557.jpg [deseretnews.com]
Those RPG's came from the US?
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_mmBw3uzPnJI/TDL5zWaiA5I/AAAAAAABaT0/cpJghwohg9c/s1600/weapons_of_mexican_drug_cartel_29.jpg [blogspot.com]
http://ppjg.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/picture5.jpg [wordpress.com]
That M60 was probably made in the US, but sure as fuck didn't come to cartel han
Re: (Score:3)
Orrrr you could legalize drugs, cut off their income/buying power, and thus put them out of business?
Spot on. And most of the rest of the world's gangs, in one chop.
Unfortunately, murder doesn't create as much moral outrage in the USA as vices do, so dope is going to stay illegal and gangs will keep getting more powerful.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:The Virtual Fence was always a dumb idea (Score:5, Insightful)
If a portion of the money ($1 billion for 53 miles) was used to create jobs in Mexico, it would likely do far more to stop the tide.
But this isn't about logic, it's about feelings, and reactionaries who would rather spend money preventing and punishing illegal immigrants than giving anything to said aliens.
Re: (Score:3)
Mod parent up. (Score:4, Informative)
Although I'd expand that a bit more. It's not just about hiring the politicians who got you the money (get $1 billion for our company and we'll hire you at $1 million a year for every year of that contract or subsequent contracts).
It's also about hiring the FAMILIES of those politicians. Look around and you'll see an amazing number of wives and children of those politicians SOMEHOW working for the very corporations that benefit from the government contracts that those politicians push through based on fear of the (illegals | terrorists | pedophiles).
Re: (Score:2)
. It turns out, the Arizona law was actually drafted by the prison industry, who hoped to make a bundle off of it. Yes, illegal immigration is a serious problem, but exploiting fear and hatred to make a profit, at enormous taxpayer expense, by locking up people who just want a bette
Re:The Virtual Fence was always a dumb idea (Score:4, Interesting)
This, exactly.
The people making a stink about "onoz illegals!" IMO don't know what they're talking about. I live near the border (Tucson, AZ), and all these horrible problems created by the dirty Mexicans just ... aren't there.
Yes, there is some crime associated with drug smuggling; yes, there is a higher crime rate among the poor. But it's better among the Hispanic community here than in many other populations of non-immigrants.
Re: (Score:3)
Really? Your hospitals are having no problems whatsoever in getting paid from illegal immigrants?
Re:The Virtual Fence was always a dumb idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Not specifically because they're illegal, no.
Actually, I'd wager that the burden on the health care system from indigent ER abuse from inner-city black populations in Atlanta or Los Angeles is worse than the burden on our ER's from Mexicans.
And, if you'd offer these folks a path to citizenship, they'd be more able to participate in the economy and pay for health care like everyone else.
There's an excellent hospital near where I live (the place that they're treating Gabrielle Giffords, actually), and the last time I was there (in the ER at night) it was mostly drunk fraternity/sorority members, not Mexicans.
Re:The Virtual Fence was always a dumb idea (Score:5, Insightful)
If you offer them a path to citizenship, you just make a mockery of the legislative system-- it ends up saying "Dont do this, but if you really want to you can, and you wont be punished for it". Illegal immigration is illegal (duh), and rewarding it encourages more of it.
Youre better off reforming immigration laws than undermining the legal system.
Re: (Score:2)
Who said anything about blaming the black?
I blame racial prejudice and lack of compassion for poor blacks and other groups being in their predicament, and having a hard time getting out of it.
Re: (Score:3)
Drug smugglers are a very small part of Mexicans. Yes, the Mexican drug war is seriously bad shit, and violent smugglers and gang-bangers have no business in our country. The Mexicans are as fed up with those folks as we are.
The point is, there are already laws against that. There's no reason to conflate the majority of Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal, who are peaceful folks who just want the same things that citizens want, with a violent criminal enterprise.
They've got nothing in common except their
Re: (Score:3)
I worked at the border. Borders do not stop people, but jobs and co-development do.
A lot of people try to cross border illegally to get a new status. If there was not visa requirement and people could move freely, many immigrants would actually part from the USA. The market would start to work.
Such thing happened in China when they canceled permits for living in a city. Many people sat tight in cities, only because they had invested in permits.
Ironically it was the USA who called the former USSR to "tear do
Re: (Score:2)
It's US citizens distributing and buying drugs illegally that finance such drug lords, making the Mexico's government job almost impossible.
Re: (Score:2)
I've heard that the pollen from industrial hemp virtually kills the THC content of the abusive varietals in a two mile radius, If that is true then all the feds would have to do is legalize industrial hemp production or even scatter the seeds themselves. Which would only leave Cocaine, heroin and meth as potential income sources. possession of any or those drug are highly vilified in our society anyways.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
WHAT?! Why the FUCK should we be rewarding criminals invading our country?
Because it would get us fewer illegal immigrant criminals for a less amount of money than we spend on ineffectual border control and punishment?
That it also would be the compassionate thing to do is a plus for me, but apparently a negative for you.
Re: (Score:2)
So... why did it fail? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm curious as to why the project failed. They claim to have a much cheaper plan that they're going to try now; why didn't they try that in the first place? Is it going to be substantially less effective? So ineffective that it's not worth spending money on that, either?
The article mentions "glitches and delays". Is that because Boeing is just bad at its job? Or is it a fundamentally difficult thing?
I'm not asking about the political implications, which are substantial. I just want to know: America is supposed to be good at tech, but this is hardly the first time that a Big Government Project has failed. Is there a lesson we can learn here? Or is it endemic to the fact that the US government does things on a scale no other operation in the world does?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
1) That's not going to be cheap. Steel is expensive. Claymores are expensive.
2) That's not going to be effective. I can think of ten ways to get around that if you want to cross.
You'll kill a lot of vultures, coyotes, bobcats, deer, and javelina though.
Re: (Score:2)
Killing or maiming people with claymores sounds a little excessive for the crime of illegal immigration to me but I do think we should secure or boarder. I like your two 16 foot high fences idea, but I think we should take a pass on claymores. We could put a rail track between them and have fairly regular patrols done from an electric trolley by ICE agents as well. I bet all of that could happen for the costs of a few days in Afghanistan.
Re: (Score:2)
Killing or maiming people with claymores sounds a little excessive for the crime of illegal immigration to me
No kidding. What gets me is that the very same people who appear to want to shoot or otherwise kill illegal border crossers are largely the same who preach sanctity of life.
Re:So... why did it fail? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, when you start coming up with ideas reminiscent of the Berlin Wall (automatic machine guns rather than claymores, not quite as tall, and a larger space between them), you might consider that you're working for the wrong side.
Re: (Score:2)
"I'm curious as to why the project failed. They claim to have a much cheaper plan that they're going to try now; why didn't they try that in the first place?"
If they did that in the first place, the campaign contributors who benefit from those big government contracts wouldn't get much benefit.
Re: (Score:2)
Stana, who serves as one of Congress’s watchdogs, recently published a Secure Border Initiative (SBI) Report detailing a series of problems with the SBI program, including: issues of camera clarity in bad weather, mechanical problems with the radar, and the radar not being sensitive enough to pick things up.
A brief search with your search engine of choice will lead you to chapter and verse. It looks like the old problem of 'it should work so we will build it'. No clear plan for piloting the program, poor oversight. The usual stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
Very interesting.
I do wonder, though. As you say, "it should work". It doesn't seem completely unreasonable as an idea. Was it actually possible to do? Were there any feasibility studies, and if they said it was feasible, why were they wrong?
(Whether it was necessary or reasonable to do is a political and strategic question that I don't feel qualified to ask, since the answers will always come back with a partisan filter for cherry-picking data.)
Re: (Score:2)
Projects by big organisations fail all the time but ${BIG BANK}'s failed IT restructuring process doesn't make a good story. The amount of politics, bullshit and people not really knowing what's involved or what they want means that large projects take a great deal of skill to manage. Few managers have that skill.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd be very surprised if the original estimates were realistic without absolutely everything going as planned.
Why, oh why.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Can't we at least get a better class of pork-barrel projects to funnel money to defense contractors? I'd appreciate getting at least some value for the money.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
trickle down economics
We'll continue to believe that fairy-tale.
Re: (Score:2)
Bah, you can achieve the same result by throwing rocks at windows.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a lot better for a politician to look like they care than for them to look like they don't care period.
Regardless, a real fence won't keep people out anymore than a lock will keep a thief out, or a password will keep a hacker out. The real problem here is the lack of legal methods of immigration from Mexico, which is not entirely the US's fault, in fact, from my understanding, it's pretty much the Mexican government that makes immigration near
What do you mean? (Score:2)
The Mexican Constitution guarantees people free transit across the country, including migrating.
As long as you identify yourself the government can held you against your will inside the country unless they know you have a legal procedure pending that demands you are rooted.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that there are some very powerful people who like the status quo. They get a labor force that works for third-world wages, can't unionize, and doesn't complain to OSHA. Amnesty for illegals would destroy all that. Having effective border controls would destroy it too. So you don't get either.
Re: (Score:2)
Not really. Implant an RFID chip in every baby.
Or one better: an implanted GPS SoC.
Yes, I'm joking, but I also fear this will be pushed by politicians within two generation from now, and become reality within the end of the century. Big corporations would be all for it, and the sheeple would say, like they always have, "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear".
No technical remedies for social problems (Score:5, Insightful)
I think i have an obsession for technical solutions. I can't walk by any new gadget without thinking "That could solve this problem" and ending up buying most of them. But in the end even i learned, that for social problems, you need social solutions. If you try to solve social problems with technology, you will always fail. It's also true the other way round: you cannot solve technological problems with social measures. Unless one accepts that, failures like this fence will happen again and again.
CU, Martin
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Even with the pill there was a change of social norms as well. I strongly believe, that technological innovations happen when the time is ripe for them. The steam engine for example was invented several times. It took a certain evironment for it to prosper.
Re: (Score:3)
OK, my theory is different here: Technology (disrupting or not) appears when the circumstances in the scoiety are right. The inventor is a channel, a spark (powder still required) at best. Look how often certain technologies have been "invented" in history. If you invent a fantastic technology in the wrong moment, you will be designated a lunatic or a SF author at best.
How about a good 'ole fashioned REAL system? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Now, H-1B visas on the other hand...
A single sentence can solve this problem. (Score:2)
Mandatory 1 year federal prison sentence for each illegal alien employed by anyone for any reason.
That one sentence would solve the problem immediately and better than any fence or wall.
Re: (Score:3)
Mandatory 1 year federal prison sentence for each illegal alien employed by anyone for any reason.
That one sentence would solve the problem immediately and better than any fence or wall.
But when we keep discovering that the very politicians who complain the loudest about illegal aliens turn out to be the ones with an illegal gardener or nanny, it becomes obvious that this isn't really about keeping illegal aliens out of the country [slashdot.org].
Re: (Score:3)
COTS, my pickup, and you (Score:2)
A billion dollars? What if I drove to my local Fry's Electronis, and bought IP cams, all-weather cable, cheap routers and switches, and asked you to watch the border from the screen you're on now?
Oh, and maybe we could have 5,000 iPads or iPhones available for pickup at Apple stores so Border Patrol agents could watch too.
I could load the stuff in my pickup, you could set up the WAN, and I'm guessing we'd still have $990 million dollars left to buy up some little-used, suddenly available high tech IR and
JMHO: there is a *much* better solution. (Score:3)
Most Illegals come to the US for jobs and/or social services. Deny them that, and they will stop coming. This would be *far* less expensive, and more effective. That would take care of about 70% of the problem. We would still need to patrol for the real bad guys. No system is perfect, but this would make a lot of sense.
1. Make e-verify mandatory.
2. Have IDs that are very difficult, if not impossible, to forge. Our money is very difficult to counterfeit, why not do the same with IDs?
3. No ETINs for illegals.
4. No sweeping amnesty, ever. No rewards for breaking our law.
5. As I understand it, in Mexico, you spend, at least, two years in prison for entering the country illegally. That is for the first offense. The US should adopt, and enforce, similar laws.
6. No more anchor-baby loophole.
7. Prison time for anybody who knowing hires an illegal.
See how easy that is? Fixing the illegal immigration problem is not that hard. The problem is corrupt US politicians who do not want to fix the problem, but the corporate owners don't want the problem fixed.
Re: (Score:2)
Stricter regulations on illegal immigration should go hand-in-hand with a liberalized immigration policy, making it easier and quicker for potential immigrants to come to the country legally as law-abiding taxpayers. There are millions of illegal immigrants in the US who haven't caused any problems for anyone. If we had a sane legal immigration policy to go along with more tightly controlled borders, we'd be in the same place with regards to the number of recent immigrants, except they'd all be "in the sy
You are a complete twat. (Score:3)
Who is going to pay and organize that massive administrative burden?
You can't resolve social issues with your brain dead pseudo solutions.
The issue at hand is economical disparity: USians can pay cheap labour with their pocket change, and neither party really wants to abandon such fruitful economic interchange. It is only right wing posturing from people that actually don't appreciate the realities of economical interchange in the border that get infuriated about illegal immigration.
As long as this economic
Or they could just prosecute the employers. (Score:5, Insightful)
I know, I know. That's crazy talk. Why would either party go after rich and powerful people, when they can just spend the sheeple's hard-earned cash? Otherwise they might have to spend it on health care, education, roads, or something else that might actually be useful.
We can put real live guards on it 24x7x365 cheaper (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's do the math.
The US Mexico border is 1,969 miles. Stationing on average 4 guards per mile gives us 7,876 guards. 4 shifts to give us 24x7x365 coverage gives us 31,504 guards.
31,504 guards would give us 4 guards per mile of US Mexico border, 24x7x365.
Assume generously that each guard costs us $150,000 / yr for pay, benefits, equipment, logistics, training, and administration.
BOTTOM LINE: For a price of 4.75 billion USD per year we can have 1 well paid, well equipped guard stationed on average every 1/4 mile along the entire 1,969 miles of the US Mexico border.
No, that doesn't include facilities and infrastructure to support the operation, but building guard towers, barracks, and administrative buildings is one of the few things that the government excels at.
Like government make-work programs? This is among the best I can think of in terms of jobs created per $$$ because it puts real people on the ground doing what real people do best. Rather than giving billions to some contractor who will employ 1,000 people, we are CREATING 31,504 NEW JOBS, and they are good hard working outdoor jobs, in the service of our nation, that most Americans would be proud to do and to pay for.
Personally I would like to see open borders and see us eliminate the uneconomical policies that drive us to fight the free flow of people and ideas, but that's not going to happen, so let's secure the damn thing.
Re: (Score:3)
You can make a simpler presentation of this concept by simply calling it a 10-fold expansion of the 1991 Border Patrol ($300 million budget for 3,000 agents: http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat6/147284.pdf [gao.gov]) to 30,000 and $3 billion.
Part of the problem with this idea - which is generally feasible and affordable - is the ambivalence about locking down the border by people who actually live there. The "patrol" the entire border idea requires building a patrol road and infrastructure where there along the entire bo
Re: (Score:3)
Let's do the math.
The US Mexico border is 1,969 miles. Stationing on average 4 guards per mile gives us 7,876 guards. 4 shifts to give us 24x7x365 coverage gives us 31,504 guards.
31,504 guards would give us 4 guards per mile of US Mexico border, 24x7x365.
Assume generously that each guard costs us $150,000 / yr for pay, benefits, equipment, logistics, training, and administration.
BOTTOM LINE: For a price of 4.75 billion USD per year we can have 1 well paid, well equipped guard stationed on average every 1/4 mile along the entire 1,969 miles of the US Mexico border.
You're on the right track, but your numbers are a little low. One guard per 1/4 mile is too far apart for any kind of mutual support, and in many places too far apart to prevent people from easily slipping through the gaps.
To make it work, you need to add fences with sensors. Your 31,000 guards would be sufficient to walk the fences and check for gaps, check alarms, etc., and then you'd need another force of guards, probably another 16,000, set up as alert response teams (ARTs), mounted in trucks.
If I
Re: (Score:2)
Get free food...
Where are the Cheetos? Can I have a Mountain Dew?
Re:Like leaving the front door open (Score:5, Insightful)
An inaccurate comparison as closing a door is easy and hermetically sealing thousand of miles of border is impossible.
Look at the problems the Israelis have securing their Gaza border against tunneling.
Consider that they are a highly motivated and technically sophisticated people with a much,much shorter border to guard.
Border sealing is distraction and noise, either fines and enforcement make employing illegals an economically bad decision or the status quo continues no matter how much money is wasted at the border or how many hispanics are harassed in the streets.
Re: (Score:2)
sneaking across the great wall of china at whatever point in that 4000 mile stretch is the least defended would be easy, blending in as successfully as a mexican in california can would be less so.
getting a job that pays far more than a similar one in you home country and doesn't have chinese nationals lining up for it would be another real challenge.
Re:Like leaving the front door open (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't need any more people.
Maybe that were the exact thoughts of the Indians about your grand-parents.
Re: (Score:3)
Exactly like that. And you see how well it worked out for them. Do you really want to find out what it's like from from their perspective?
Re: (Score:3)
How it worked out for the Native Americans: free land, free American citizenship, free education, affirmative action.
And all they were asked to do is give up their entire heritage and culture, then conform to the rules of a foreign society. At least that is what they were offered after being the victims of genocide. Yep, that's a hell of deal they got.
BTW, they already had 'free' land, American citizenship, they educated their own, and had no need for affirmative action. They were content with their life
Re:Like leaving the front door open (Score:4, Funny)
Nah. They were happy to get the blankets we gave them.
That's one government handout you won't hear the right wingers complain about.
Re: (Score:2)
That's tiny compared to the Wall of China (4000) and just slightly longer than the West German Wall (800).
The Great Wall of China was designed to protect against organized horseback raids, not individuals sneaking in. It took centuries to build, cost about 1 million lives of construction workers, and it wasn't even all that effective.
The German wall was not impenetrable, and the effectiveness it had was the result of East Germany's willingness to gun down hundreds of unarmed civilians in cold blood. Since few Americans and even fewer people in other countries would find that strategy to be ethical, that option
Re: (Score:2)
West German Wall (800).
You mean the Berlin Wall? Where have you read 800? From what I can tell, it was only about 120 km [berlin-wall.org] (the actual concrete wall, not the barbed wire parts).
Re: (Score:2)
From Wolphramalpha:
United States: 87.3 people per square mile
Mexico : 147 people per square mile
United Kingdom: 663 people per square mile
Germany: 610 people per square mile
(2008 estimate)
In other words, what you believe about the US population can't be taken seriously given your monumental ignorance on this matter.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:fucking Mexicans! (Score:4, Insightful)
Because what you're describing is commonly called murder, and is illegal under pretty much every law in the world, national and international (just as it should be)?
If you're really serious about this, your sig seems quite apt.
Re: (Score:3)
Because the logistics and risk of posting armed humans along 7,000 miles of wilderness in large enough force to make a difference is even more expensive than this silly "virtual fence" idea.
We're better off doing satellite surveillance and ordinary policing.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We'd be better off if we just ripped down the fences and let people migrate like any other animal.. But then how would you be able to acquire and keep your slaves if they could just walk off the plantation?