NYT editorial: Border Insecurity; "Pouring billions into building a fence is viewed as insane."

[DeepModem Mom]

Editorial
Border Insecurity
Published: March 4, 2008

From San Diego on the Pacific to Brownsville on the Rio Grande, a steel curtain is descending across the continent. Behind it lies a nation so confused and conflicted by its immigration problems that it has decided to wall itself off and wait for things to fix themselves. This country once was a confident global magnet for an invigorating flow of immigrant workers and citizens-to-be. Now it is just hunkering.

The evidence of this neurosis is visible at the border with Mexico, where the Department of Homeland Security has been rushing to reinforce an ineffective system of fencing and sensors, trucks and boots on the ground. The mission, imposed upon it by Congress after a wearying stalemate on immigration reform, is a mandate to do the impossible, at record speed and at record expense....

In Arizona, a 28-mile pilot project to build a “virtual fence” of sensors and cameras has fallen short of expectations. The problem, according to the Government Accountability Office, was too much haste and too little consultation with the Border Patrol. The main contractor, Boeing, rushed into the project with the wrong software. Its cameras couldn’t focus on targets, and systems were confounded by innocuous things like rain. The Bush administration has confused things further by saying the system is working as planned — but won’t be expanded.

That is not necessarily good news along remote border areas in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, where there is a lot of desert and mountains and where the alternative — pouring billions into building a real fence — is viewed as simply insane. No amount of fencing would seriously deter illegal crossers, border-town officials insist, and the effort actually makes things worse: You have to build roads to build the fence, and the new roads connect with old ones and vastly increase their usefulness to smugglers in cars and trucks....

Let’s agree that any country needs to control its borders and ports, and that this one has done too little on that front. But that worthy goal founders when the overall strategy boils down to simplistic components — bits of fencing and technological cure-alls — rather than a comprehensive solution that also attacks the reasons people cross illegally....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/opinion/04tue1.html?oref=login

[winggirle]

1. how crass can you get...

Isn't this the same nation that told Mr. Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, now here we are, only a decade away building up a wall against those in Mexico from the trade and free living of their once owed land?
This is crazy, you would rather build a fence to keep them out, because of securities reasons when the whole cause of 9/11 happen at the Gates of Canada's entry...
I don't know why our government looks differently at this issue, but the America people are losing their jobs and houses and they are worried about border issues.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Indeed, winggirle -- welcome to DU!!!

[stellanoir]

2. It is insane.

We can't even build functional levees in NOLA and they really think they can do this?

Psssssssssssssssst

Good neighbors don't need fences.

If they fined the employers of undocumented immigrants a million bucks per employee and invested that dough in viable Mexican businesses then this whole issue would go "poof."

[DeepModem Mom]

4. Good point! And don't forget these shenanigans along the border...

"In Texas, the fence is a dotted line, blocking some places but not others. It cuts through the University of Texas at Brownsville and blocks the migration of wildlife by bifurcating valuable nature preserves in which the country has already made a heavy investment. At the same time, it seems at pains not to disrupt things that really matter, like golf, stopping short of the River Bend country club and a luxury gated community owned by Ray L. Hunt, a Dallas oil billionaire."

[stellanoir]

5. Yup it's totally the

"strong on security" ruse.

The bigotry it foments is disgusting.