This is an article that appeared in today’s online USA Today. Link below, but pertinent quote below that. My point in posting (for those who will ask) is that the next Al Quaeda attack could very likely have been facilitated by our porous Southern Border.
"More than three years after the terrorist attacks in 2001, the 11,000 men and women who serve as the border’s front-line defense are overwhelmed. Despite an influx of new technology, such as underground sensors and cameras that pan the desert, agents catch only about one-third of the estimated 3 million people who cross the border illegally every year.
Most of the illegals are poor Mexican laborers looking for work. But officials are alarmed that a growing number hail from Central and South America, Asia, even Mideast countries such as Syria and Iran. In 2003, the Border Patrol arrested 39,215 so-called “OTMs,” or other-than-Mexicans, along the Southwest border. In 2004, the number jumped to 65,814."
Weeks: Intersting article, but I didn’t see any real thought to an answer to the problem. Sure, we have to be careful, not just too the South, but everywhere. Vigilance, to me, does not meeting shutting our border, or shutting ourselves off from the rest of the world, or denying citizens their civil liberties.
I’m not saying that you meant any of that, and I don’t want to take your thread away from its original direction, so, what are your thoughts on what we should do?
This illustrates how differently people can feel about a given issue.
To me, the numbers are so alarming that it does call for the draconian response that Bloom is wary of. I published the numbers because I hoped you would consider how many people we are talking about. Not hundreds or even thousands, but tens of thousands who have gotten word that the way into the US is via Mexico, while Mexico shows little to no inclination to control it.
Does it not even cause your reality to shiver a bit to think of Syrians swimmin’ the Rio Grande? And literally, being facilitated because of misplaced goodwill for the poor people of Mexico?
My state economy is in near shambles and the drain on social services is a big part of the problem. Yes, there are other factors, such as the overall economy, shifting world trade balances because of globalism etc.
I am impacted by native Mexican illegal immigration in many ways, but I was mainly pointing out the potential for terrorism via the same conduit as worthy of alarm.
So I respectfully disagree by claiming that it is a huge problem, not just a perennial social ill. There have always been border crossings, but not in these numbers.
And just to be pre-emptive, yes, I do blame the President for hypocrisy in frisking Gramma at the airport in the name of the serious “War on Terror” while allowing the crossings to continue.
Hmm, I doubt if the President feels like I do about things.
I agree, we should do something about illegal crossings, but none of the options that have ever been placed on the table seem like the correct one, to me.
Seems to me that the vast majority of those crossing do it for perfectly innocuous reasons, like make a better life or providing for their families. Even the Syrians (talk about whole-sale condemnation). On the other hand, no manner of border control will keep out terrorists since they will be either smart enough to come into the States legally or resourceful enough to defeat any border control scheme we could put in place.
A look at organized foreign criminal groups, insurance fraud, Social Security benefit-seekers, terror cells would suggest that the notion that its mostly “innocuous” job-seekers is outdated. Within my lifetime, the character of immigrants has changed a lot. From those who sought to be Americans, speak the language and settle permanently, many now USE the system either to send money home, hatch various crimes from simple fraud to identity theft, know that they can sign up Gramma for benefits and have an active and ongoing antipathy to the US form of government, its culture and survival in the future.
At the very least, we can hire more people so the border patrol won’t be so understaffed and overwhelmed.
For some security problems, there doesn’t seem to be any obvious thing we can do, except stupid things that offer no real improvement. But in this case there is one obvious and effective thing we can do: properly fund the border patrol.
Sorry, but this strikes me as paranoid and a touch xenophobic. I haven’t seen statistics recently, but I think the crime rate among aliens is comparable to that among citizens. Historically, countries that have welcomed immigrants (even at the price of social change) have prospered and advanced, the US up to WW I being a good example. I can’t think of a country off-hand that was overwhelmed by aliens, and was destabilized or impoverished as a result.
The problem is not that we have immigration - it’s that we have illegal, unsupervised immigration.
Personally, I’d favor increasing the legal immigration quota (and making it a single quota - last I looked, it’s per-country, so depending on your country of origin it may be easy or almost impossible). Increase it enough so that it’s close to the current per-year illegal numbers, in fact.
But at the same time, I’d like to slam a giant, impermeable barrier down so that the ONLY way to come to the US would be through the process. Make it easy to come the US legally - and well-nigh impossible to come here otherwise.
Anyone without legal right to be here would be summarily deported - and all appeals would be done only AFTER they are out of the country. Those who want sanctuary would be held in federal custody until granted or denied - and if denied, they would be immediately deported as well.
Harsh? Possibly. But it would eliminate most of the problems with the current process, and still allow almost everyone who wanted into the US to come - the idea is to weed out the bad apples, and make it easier and safer for the rest.
It’d also have intersting effects on the job market - in many border states, low-wage jobs stay that way in large part because illegal immigrants are afraid to push for better wages (and the artificially low wages keep legal workers away).
I think it was about 17 (?) aliens who conspired to the 9/11 events, which in fact caused major economic problems for the United States and affects all of us to this day in various aspects of our lives, including government responses and the kind of policies so often discussed here.
And yes, in anticipation, those guys did not sneak in from Mexico but the fact that there are Middle Easterners trying to come up through there now remains of great concern to me.
The bigger picture isn’t about Weekender’s zenophobia or whatever pejorative you can come up with, it’s about the ongoing threat of terrorist attack that makes me feel the border situation is unacceptable.
I realize that there are two threads of argument here and I did bring up both of them. But to fault me for my stance on one does not diminish the other. The fact is that ongoing neglect of the border issue from both sides of the aisle has led to this exposed flank of the US.
The real problem to me is that if we close ourselves in, tell the rest of the world to go to hell, change our way of living and thinking so that real freedom (along with its dangers) is eliminated…then we are doing everything the bastards that attacked us on 9/11 hoped we would.
In fact, it seems to me we have gone out of our way to give them too much success already.
They came here to wreck our way of life and to cause us to pull our concerns away from other nations, and wreck our reputation among the other nations of the earth. DO NOT HELP THEM achieve these goals.
And you may be the ones going to hell, while the rest of the world does ok. But i feel i can’t argue this, because there is an ethos of “it’s us against the world”, “we live in desperate times”, “everybody hates us because of our freedom”, etc and i think that has moved into the mainstream of American self-image now, made itself at home with the very well established tradition of racial prejudice, and festered. This may be the real legacy of the G W Bush presidency, and will take forever to change. See Israel.
That’s total bull**** and you know it. Since when is it anyone’s right to walk into our country? If we’re not allowed to control our borders, then you shouldn’t be allowed to control yours, so how about you start leaving all of your windows and doors open? “Oh, well that’s different.”
:roll:
In your home, you have the absolute right to determine who enters. National borders are no different.
