Via Hugh Hewitt :
The president needs to announce that the Guard will indeed be deployed in support of the Customs and Border personnel, but that the key to lasting border security is the dramatic expansion of border fencing in keeping with the House bill.
He should urge that the Senate adopt the House language in this regard (along with any other language necessary to assure that the construction of the 700 miles of fencing not be subject to any other law that might inhibit the quick start and completion of the projects.)
He must avoid the word "virtual," as in "virtual fencing." The White House isn't surrounded by a "virtual fence," and voters have no faith in "virtual fences" except as supplemts to the real thing.
If the president comes out early and hard in favor of expanding the fences along the border which have already worked so successfully in urban areas, he will have met the American public where it is with what it demands.
The above remarks are in reference to the speech Bush will be making Monday evening about immigration.
I have to ask, what is wrong with a virtual fence? I blame TV, everything looks too easy. People seem to think that Bush can just wave a magic wand and voila! a thousand miles of fence appear. It is as if people have lost an understanding of what it takes to actually do things. Remember Katrina and how long it took to move a couple of hundred thousand people out of New Orleans when they wanted to leave? Do people have any idea of the actual task involved in terms of logistics and labor and time and effort to do something like this? It would seem to me that if we did not have some kind of virtual fence up for at least awhile it would be no big deal for millions of people to slip into the country while we are building a fence.
It is also true that about a third of the undocumented workers in the country came here legally and then did not leave. This will not effect them. As far as security is concerned I don't think any of the September 11 hijackers were border crossers..so what makes people believe the next terrorists will be?
Hugh Hewitt may say that the White House has more than a virtual fence, but the White House is also protected by a lot more than a pretty iron fence too. In fact they use technology as well as the fence. What is the point in having all this fancy technology, if we do not use it?
2 comments:
rich:
Well, there is no way to be sure but I think that terrorists and hit men are far more likely to come in through customs in a BMW than they are to risk their lives crossing a desert.
But that fence is very long, there are stretches of hundreds of miles that are very isolated. It would not be a big deal for someone to drive up to that fence on one side of the border and put up a ladder and go over it. The point to the censors and drones is to scan for people in a large area. They use this technology to chase the Taliban in Afghanistan.
But that still does not deal with the whole issue of time.
david:
It is kind of a catch 22. If employers refuse to hire hispanics, they are discriminating. If they hire the wrong hispanics, they are accused of being criminals.
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