Vanity Fair looks at the plight of ranchers on the U.S.-Mexico border and how it might affect the upcoming debate over immigration reform:
When you try to understand Arizona’s dysfunction—and maybe, God forbid, America’s—you have to start at The Fence and the grand self-delusion that the border could be fortified enough to keep out the invading brown horde. An ugly symbol of a frightened nation, it has fooled no one, except perhaps the politicians in far-off Washington who built it and made it their proxy for immigration reform. But it has barely slowed the Mexicans who’ve climbed over it, dug under it, cut through it, or, as on Heilig’s ranch and elsewhere, simply walked around it. To be sure, the numbers of undocumented border crossers are down, from more than a million a year to a few hundred thousand. It took the Great Recession to stifle the northward migration. The flow of drugs, on the other hand, continues unabated; America’s demand is insatiable and the fence has barely slowed the smugglers.
Now as Washington finally turns to immigration reform, Heilig has no illusion that President Obama’s plan to overhaul the immigration system—or the slate of congressional alternatives—is going to make much difference for the ranchers who live along the border. The key component of the various proposals includes offering a way for some 11 million illegal immigrants to become citizens, which has been the sticking point that stalled reform for decades.
“The big debate will be about what to do with the people living in the United States today,” he says. “But it doesn’t really address the issue of people coming across. I don’t understand why they don’t deal with that.”
This article appears in Feb 7-13, 2013.
I remember a wall in Berlin. I could see it from my office window. Every once and a while some brave soul would make it across. Take my word for it walls don’t work.
The Berlin Wall worked remarkably well, especially since it had guard towers all along it, and had a long “warning track” that was in spots very hard to get through to the wall itself. A handful of people survived their escape attempts, but many more died trying.
Here, the tide of people flowing over the border is thousands of times the number of people who tried to jump the Berlin Wall. It likely wouldn’t work, especially when every coyote has a plasma torch in his bag.
Walls do work. Prison walls work. Sure some escape, but it keeps the majority within. The great wall worked for a long time. The Berlin wall worked well because there were maen with machine guns on it ever 100 meters. The point of a border wall isn’t to stop everyone. It’s to stop people from EASILY coming across, driving across, swimming across. Just wait until some radical terrorist group slips into Arizona and does some sort of damage like poisoning our water supply, murdering more children at our oh-so-awesome gun-free schools, or hike nuclear weapon components across and then assembles it in Tucson and detonates it. Then all of you pro-illegal immigration a-holes can shut your mouths after some serious damage has been done.
I can’t wait for a small army of terrorists to show up and be thwarted—”Victory,”get ready to pitch your script to Disney—by grade-schoolers! It’ll be just like Red Dawn, only for a younger (and younger at heart!) demographic, starring Jaden Smith and Honey Boo Boo! Macaulay Culkin will be too old for one of the kid terror-fighter roles, but I’m sure that for the right price we can get Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern to play the terrorists!
Walls? WTF! How much will that cost compared to the good guy with a gun who will protect us…hmmm
I don’t think a “Berlin” type wall is necessary or appropriate!
Avoid Post Office closures putting them to work helping with the immigration problem.
The United States Postal System has a vast network of employees and offices in every tiny piece of the United States.
Start controlling who is within the United States borders by enlisting their services. Keeping track of legally admitted visitors, students and temporary workers would be a first step.
When a non citizen enters the country put their information in a computer data base, hand them a card with instructions for six month reviews at any post office. Have them sign a promise to report, and authorization for immediate deportation if their status is not updated as instructed.
Fund the Postal Service for the additional responsibility and workload. Make use of this extensive system already housed and staffed which is apparently in need of additional work or face job losses and closures.
When is the fence going up along the Canadian border? If my memory serves me correctly, the hijackers of the planes that crashed and killed thousands on 9/11 came through Canada.