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Commenter Clyde writes:
Key principles of Israeli fence building are:
– see-through fencing so you can see infiltrators coming
– parallel patrol road for immediate armed response to intrusions
– remote sensors and cameras
– countless miles of razor wire to slow down intruders
– they do erect walls in urban areas but 90% of the West Bank security barrier is a patrolled see-through fenceDonald Trump always calls it a wall but the best barrier on the Mexican border would copy the Israeli and Saudi fences. They have shown the way. Just bring in the best Israeli and Saudi/Airbus consultants and start building within a month or two.
The U.S. has somewhat better walls and fences than in the past, but vast amounts of time and money have been wasted by Administrations run by Presidents who more or less favored more illegal immigration for partisan (Obama) or dynastic (Bush) reasons.
I visited the Border twelve years ago in a remote stretch of Arizona where illegal aliens were pouring across every night. The border fence then was a disgrace. It not only failed to keep foreigners out, but it also got a lot of the illegals killed in the desert. Weak border barriers are an Attractive Nuisance. A responsibly governed country has strong borders.
Here’s a UPI feature I wrote about the Arizona border a dozen years ago, with most of it below the fold:
Mexican border, Naco-style
By STEVE SAILER, UPI National Correspondent | June 23, 2003 at 8:12 AMNACO, Ariz., June 23 (UPI) — I’m driving slowly down a deserted dirt road 100 miles southeast of Tucson, Ariz., near Naco, a bi-national border hamlet. The road lies about 20 yards north of the international frontier.
At least, I think it’s The Border. It’s hard to say for sure, though. Ranchers carefully divide up these high plains with barbed wire to keep their cattle home. The barrier to my south looks barely more impressive than the ranch fences — it’s just six strands of barbed wire topping out at chest high.
While the federal government’s fence would stop a cow, it’s not much of a barrier for a determined human fleeing Mexican poverty and inequality. As far as international boundaries go, it’s not going to make anyone forget the Great Wall of China. I feel confident I could take the tire iron from the trunk of my rental car whack my way into Mexico in less than five minutes. I might just pound down the top wires until I could step over, or maybe I’d dig out a small gully and crawl under.
The illegal immigrants who flood the other way into Arizona every night are equally well prepared. Every couple of hundred yards or so, a footpath leads north from some kind of hole they’ve made in the fence. There’s a fair amount of litter dropped alongside the trails, such as a half-empty tube of Mexican muscle unguent.
While crossing the fence itself isn’t hard, liniment is a sensible item to pack, since illegally immigrating can be hard, dangerous, even deadly work. The problem is evading the U.S. Border Patrol, which maintains a fairly strong presence on the roads within a few dozen miles of the line.
Every 20 minutes or so, a white Chevy Tahoe with the broad green stripe of the U.S. Border Patrol drives past me along the otherwise empty road from Douglas to Naco. (The latter would probably draw more tourists if it had been named Nacho, but its curious moniker supposedly combines the last syllables of ArizoNA and MexiCO.)
The agents briefly eyeball me to see if I’m a smuggler loitering to pick up border-crossers and whisk them away to my safe house. I’m a harmless-looking 6-foot-4-inch white guy driving a tiny Suzuki, however, so I hardly fit their profile.
To avoid being charged with “racial profiling,” airport security personnel notoriously carry out random, arbitrary searches. The Border Patrol, though, doesn’t much pester people who look like me, no doubt much to the relief of the business people south of the border who make their living from U.S. tourists who want to be able to visit Mexico and return home without a hassle.
If you don’t look like you have a legal right to be in the United States, however, the feds are less accommodating. In return for about $1,000, people-traffickers (or “coyotes”) in Mexico promise their customers that their partners in Arizona will pick them up. But the U.S.-side contacts don’t like to venture too far south where the Border Patrol presence is densest. So, the coyotes typically insist that the illegal aliens walk north from the border for one to three nights to arrive at a designated pick-up spot along some lonely road well inside Arizona.
The fairly green plateau southeast of Tucson is not particularly hostile, as deserts go. Indeed, some locals point to the average annual rainfall of 14 inches in Naco, only 1 inch less than in Los Angeles, and dispute whether it’s a desert at all.
On a day when the temperature hits 111 in low-lying Phoenix, Naco, at an elevation of 4,700 feet, is about 18 degrees cooler. In fact, the 15-percent relative humidity and the 20 mph hour wind make for a delightful late spring afternoon.
I feel good, though, only because my rapidly evaporating sweat is cooling me. Here, water — in large quantities — is life.
Empty water jugs litter the scores of trails leading north from the fence. Because water weighs 8 pounds per gallon, illegal aliens crossing in the summer must make life-or-death decisions about how much water to carry. Too little and they die of thirst. Too much and they wear themselves out and could be abandoned by their coyote.
The professional ethics of people smugglers are not much better than those of the region’s numerous drug smugglers. Indeed, many switch back and forth between the two intertwined careers, although, when running drugs, the smugglers work harder to safely deliver their cargo. Coyotes are notorious for abandoning stragglers, or vanishing at the first hint of trouble, leaving their groups to wander in the desert, dying slowly, horribly of thirst.
The following day, four illegal aliens die in the lower, hotter desert to the southwest of Tucson, bringing Arizona’s total for May to 15.
There are other dangers. Some winter crossers froze to death, and others have been hit by lightning. In this lawless atmosphere, bandits prey upon the walkers, and an accidental encounter with heavily armed drug bootleggers could be fatal. The wildlife isn’t friendly either. A local rule at the Turquoise Valley golf course in Naco reads, “A ball lying within a club length of a rattlesnake may be moved two club lengths without penalty.”
“It’s immoral to use death in the desert as a deterrent,” argues the Rev. Robin Hoover, a truck-loving Tucson minister with a cowboy accent and a Ph.D. He heads Humane Borders, a charitable organization that maintains 38 drinking water tanks in the desert to keep illegal aliens from dying.
But there aren’t many other deterrents. When caught, illegal aliens are not penalized. The Border Patrol simply dumps them back across the border to plan their next attempt. If they make it to a big city, they are home free, because the federal government has largely stopped enforcing laws against employing undocumented workers.
Some think this process benefits America. A libertarian activist sent me an e-mail message: “The current system was apparently designed to attract the most motivated, enterprising, brave, and shrewd Mexicans to come live in the United States by erecting theoretical barriers that consist mostly of their willingness to take their lives in their hands to cross the borders and thereafter letting them stay and work.”
Then again, using nothing but death in the desert to deter illegal immigration might mean that, out of 6 billion possible immigrants from the rest of the world, the United States gets those — the most unskilled and the most rash — who think they have nothing to lose.
Paradoxically, the U.S. towns just north of the border are not terribly Mexican. The illegal aliens keep moving to Tucson, Phoenix, and the rest of the United States, where the Department of Homeland Security won’t annoy them.
Californians fleeing the high prices, overwhelmed public schools and monster budget deficit of that immigrant-magnet state are moving to the Arizona border region. Thirty miles northwest of Naco is Sierra Vista, the metropolis of southeastern Arizona. It represents the American Dream, at least as measured in square feet of retail floor space. The main commercial drag already stretches for close to 10 miles.
A young ex-California man with a goatee tells me he is moving his family of six from their beat-up, over-priced rental unit south of San Jose, Calif., to the new home he’d just bought in Sierra Vista. “I got a 2,000-square-foot house on a landscaped half acre for $122,000,” he exults, but then darkens, remembering Californian’s fate. “Don’t tell everybody about this place,” he warns. “You’ll ruin it.”
Less than 16 percent of Sierra Vista’s population is Hispanic, compared to Chicago’s 26 percent. With the U.S. Army’s Fort Huachuca next door, Sierra Vista is 11 percent African-American, compared to 3 percent for Arizona as a whole. As in most military towns, blacks and whites seem to be on a more equal and friendly footing than in many big cities.
Overall, Sierra Vista’s racial situation is more egalitarian than in the bigger urban centers of the Southwest, where a caste system is emerging with the servile jobs filled by Latinos. Although it’s often said that the U.S. economy couldn’t function without illegal immigrants, Sierra Vista is prospering under the umbrella of the Border Patrol. Here “the jobs that Americans citizens just won’t do,” like cleaning motel rooms, are largely done by U.S. citizens. The secret, apparently, is to pay them enough.
The illegal immigrants’ mass trespassing on private property causes problems for the people who work the beautiful but agriculturally marginal land, where each head of cattle requires 40 acres. To stay off the roads where the Chevy Tahoes would find them, the walkers smash through private fences and raid cattle water supplies.
Elgin, Ariz., a dot on the map 25 miles north of the border, is one of the world’s more improbable-looking wine-growing regions. The scenery — blond grasslands rolling off to mountainous horizons — is straight out of a John Wayne movie. The red clay, however, is similar to the famous “terra rossa” soil of Burgundy, so audacious vintners have been growing grapes here for 20 years.
At the end of 2 miles of dirt road stands an imposing Mediterranean-style villa where the assistant manger of the 40-acre vineyard, a college student dressed in skate-punk clothes, enthusiastically pours me samples of the vineyard’s eight varietals. He shows me pictures of the July hailstorm that wiped out what would have been the 2002 vintage. Not long before, a 40,000-acre fire was stopped near the vineyard’s fences.
“Besides battling nature,” he notes, “the other big problem is keeping out the illegal aliens. They come through every night and break the fences. We have dogs, and the illegals are pretty scared of them, but some more came through last night.” The pronghorn antelope can get in through the holes and eat the vines.
Paradoxically, Arizona’s recent inundation of undocumented immigrants is the result of the Border Patrol’s relative successes in California and Texas in the 1990s. The favorite route of illegal immigrants used to be along the cool Pacific Ocean. This turned San Diego’s southern suburbs such as Imperial Beach, where the Border Patrol once caught 2,000 illegal crossers in one 24-hour period, into no man’s lands.
Homeowners repeatedly protested the theft, vandalism, physical danger and psychological violation caused by the masses of desperate men pouring through their backyards every night. So, the government built several big walls along the California-Mexico border.
The bulk of the alien smuggling business then shifted east to the border towns of Arizona, with similar chaos ensuing. Therefore, the government recently erected a corrugated iron wall about 15 feet tall through the heart of Naco and running out into the desert for a mile on each side.
It’s an ugly, rusting hulk, but it’s reasonably effective. “It keeps the immigrants out of back yards and drives them out in the country where you can work them easier,” says a friendly Border Patrol agent sitting in his truck parked under a fabric sunshade. He’s watching to make sure that no one climbs over the Naco wall. (While tall, there’s no razor wire or other deterrents on top of it.)
The officer can’t stand the desert heat because he lives a block from the beach in northern San Diego County. He has been sent from California to help for two weeks, “because they’re really getting hammered out here in Arizona.”
Outside the towns, long lines of sight work to the advantage of the Border Patrol, assuming they can get far enough off the ground to see over the shoulder-high mesquite trees. The Border Patrol’s latest innovation in Arizona is a 20-foot-high extendable “cherry-picker” with a glassed-in observation pod on top. Two of them stand sentinel outside Naco, looking rather like the Martian invaders in H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds.”
The guard from the beach hasn’t been to the Mexican side of Naco yet, but then he doesn’t much like Mexican borders towns — “too much drugs and smuggling” — except, he says, for Mexicali, a big, solid city south of Palm Springs, full of factories and colleges.
The whitewashed Mexican side of Naco, with its lavishly wide and empty main boulevard, isn’t full of anything, except for an excellent ice cream shop. Yet, it does have a quiet dignity.
Naco has no shortage of politics, though. In three blocks, I find two statutes to Benito Juarez, who, in the 1860s became Mexico’s first (and last) full-blooded Indian president. Mexico’s largely white elite has been erecting statues of him ever since.
Even more striking is the is election campaigning — posters, storefront party headquarters, and a cruising van with the portrait of the ex-ruling party’s candidate for governor of Sonora expertly painted on the side. All these expensive investments leave me impressed by the Mexicans’ enthusiasm for their democratic freedoms. At least, that is, until I mention it that evening to my wife, who comes from the West Side of Chicago and knows something about machine politics. “Or maybe it just shows how lucrative it is to be an elected official in Mexico,” she observes.
Nogales, the much larger bi-national city an hour due south of Tucson, is divided by an even bigger wall. Mexican nationals are still allowed north in large numbers to shop for necessities in the busy retail stores just north of the border. On the south side of the wall, even a decade after the North American Free Trade Agreement introduced free trade, there’s almost no legitimate retail. There are just gift shops, “pharmacia” selling prescription drugs to tourists without prescriptions, and the bars where generations of University of Arizona college boys have tried to lose their virginity.
Illegal immigration is often talked of as if it’s a vast, unstoppable phenomenon, like global warming, only less under U.S. control. Yet, with more guards, more walls, more electronic motion sensors, more floodlights, more aerial surveillance and, most importantly, more political will, the Border Patrol should be able to succeed at least as well in Arizona as it has in California and Texas.
Presumably, the bulk of illegal intruders would then try to cross in New Mexico. Still, there are only four border states, and New Mexico would thus be the end of the line. So, there don’t seem to be major technical reasons that would prevent illegal immigration from being significantly cut back, if the United States makes the effort.
The ultimate solution to the poverty that drives illegal immigrants northward, however, would appear to lie with the ruling class of Mexico, those sleek gentlemen on the billboards in Naco. The famed Peruvian economic reformer Hernando de Soto told me in 2001, “Basically the whole system … is made for a privileged elite that knows how to navigate within the existing laws, that’s got access to the big-time law firms. But the country isn’t safe for the enterprise of people who have low incomes.”
The Mexican elite could liberate the pent-up productivity of the diligent Mexican worker. Or they could continue to try to use the border as a safety valve to bleed off domestic discontent.
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The problem with fencing and walls is the same people unwilling to enforce basic immigration laws will be tasked with building and maintaining this new wall. This wall business sounds a lot like the gold standard arguments from the Paul-tards. It’s believed that this magical solution will remedy the problem of a ruling class that is at odds with the people over whom they rule.
There’s no magical solution. The old saying with regards to the gold standard is this. If your rulers are so corrupt that only hard money will keep them in line, then they are so corrupt that they will find a way to get around the gold standard. History is riddled with examples proving this.
That’s the problem with a fence. If the ruling class is so berserk for helot labor that you think a massive security fence is the way to keep the invaders out, the rulers will find a way to punch holes through your fence. McConnell, Boner and whoever is installed in the White House will scheme around it in no time.
Immigration is not a cause of the social problems plaguing the West. It is a symptom. The root cause is a ruling elite that sees itself as a feudal elite, ruling over a vast peasantry. They see themselves atop an extraction economy, where they extract what they can from those over whom they rule. The only way to fix that is the same way troublesome elites have been fixed in the past.
There will always be elites, in any human group of any significant size. Study group dynamics and you will find this is a basic fact. Leaders emerge.
We are a nation of laws that was built by a people of laws. The best tradition of law in the world. There is still a chance that we can change the laws that need changing, and enforce the ones that have fallen into disuse.
Repeal the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, for a start.
Build a wall, and elect leaders who will enforce it. If it's good enough for the elites in Israel, it's good enough for us.
Lose patience with the MSM that is owned and controlled by your elite. Communicate more, with more people. Here and beyond.
Teach.
Don't give in to the temptation of "class warfare." It will only cause you to overthrow one ruling class and install another.
"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." - The Who, Won't Get Fooled AgainReplies: @The Z Blog, @Wilkey
I spent some time in Tucson during 2003. I ended up with this weird souvenir, a burlap feed sack with “Hecho en Mexico” stenciled on it. The story was that Mexicans would have a compressed 75 pound bale of pot in it, strap it to their back, and hump it across the border into Az. You could see the places on the sack where the straps had been. The bale was smaller than a standard 75 pound bale of hay but still sizable. That amount of pot would supply 840 oz, maybe a month’s worth for a 1000 people, being conservative in estimate. I was told during that time that means was the primary method for bringing Mexican pot across the border. The route became impassable from late June until October and all over the country the availability of pot would tighten. Think of the millions people that smoke pot. The Mexican pot filled the mid and low grade markets. I haven’t smoked pot since 2008 and I have no idea of what people buy these days. But back then I saw that Midgrade Mexican pot all over America. I don’t even feel like calculating how many of those ‘mules’ moved through the Az desert. Tough bunch of men though, humping that pack through that terrain for 20 miles.
Back then I found it a massive point of irritation that our security was so threatened by Iraq and my Marines (semper fi) were deployed, wounded, and killed. Yet untold numbers of those burlap sacks made their way into the under belly of the US.
Even if you accept that the ruling class want mass immigration (which I’m sure is true in many cases, but for others it’s simply the path of least resistance), it would be harder for them to engineer it if there is a serious fence in the way.
BTW, Steve, while a fence in the literal sense is what it should be, I think it’s better for propaganda purposes to call it a wall, because that sounds more solid.
I am not saying a fence is the be-all and end-all of our current demographic crisis. But if the elite oppose something so much as they do a fence, those of you who are undecided might step back and take a second look.
There's no magical solution. The old saying with regards to the gold standard is this. If your rulers are so corrupt that only hard money will keep them in line, then they are so corrupt that they will find a way to get around the gold standard. History is riddled with examples proving this.
That's the problem with a fence. If the ruling class is so berserk for helot labor that you think a massive security fence is the way to keep the invaders out, the rulers will find a way to punch holes through your fence. McConnell, Boner and whoever is installed in the White House will scheme around it in no time.
Immigration is not a cause of the social problems plaguing the West. It is a symptom. The root cause is a ruling elite that sees itself as a feudal elite, ruling over a vast peasantry. They see themselves atop an extraction economy, where they extract what they can from those over whom they rule. The only way to fix that is the same way troublesome elites have been fixed in the past.Replies: @MarkinLA, @Buzz Mohawk
Yes, but the journey of 1000 miles starts with the first step. The first step is the fence. Then E-verify. It will take time to get laws on the books with real teeth that outlaw hiring illegals but not building a fence or not forcing the use of E-verify because it isn’t the total solution is what we are doing now.
True, but I think he needs to be understood going in that the fence is only one part of a multi-pronged solution. If you go in saying that a fence will solve all of our problems, then when the fence doesn't work 100% your enemies will say "see, we tried, and it failed."Replies: @iSteveFan
“I visited the Border twelve years ago in a remote stretch of Arizona where illegal aliens were pouring across every night…”
I visited my uncle in the 1990’s when he lived in San Diego right on the border. Ah, how I remember those warm summer nights when we would sit on his back deck and watch the illegals walk in from Mexico… Dozens. Every night.
They later moved to Bend, Oregon. Their main complaint was about too many Spanish-speaking neighbors, and the associated poor hygiene, criminality, and so forth, in San Diego, as I recall.
What will a wall accomplish? Britain is surrounded by water on all sides. It helps for naught with demented, decadent, greedy Boomer elites in charge. The Aussie head of the UK’s Green Party, Nathalie Bennett, calls now for 1/4 million Syrians to be admitted. She is, as far as I can make out, a childless feminist. Are all Green Parties in the Occident led by unattractive, unintelligent women with no real stake in the ecological future they claim to care about?
The younger generations vote Democrat.
That wall between Israel and the West Bank Palestinians is a wall when the Israeli population in the area is in direct danger from sniper fire.
India has the 4,000 kilometer double twelve foot high fence between it and Bangladesh. Filled in with razor wire between the two fences. Patrolled by squads of quasi-military personnel armed with assault rifle.
That 4,000 kilometers is longer than the border between the U.S. and Mexico.
A good fence can’t hurt, but even that wouldn’t be necessary if we were serious about internal enforcement.
Remote sensors and cameras work on a wall as well.
There's no magical solution. The old saying with regards to the gold standard is this. If your rulers are so corrupt that only hard money will keep them in line, then they are so corrupt that they will find a way to get around the gold standard. History is riddled with examples proving this.
That's the problem with a fence. If the ruling class is so berserk for helot labor that you think a massive security fence is the way to keep the invaders out, the rulers will find a way to punch holes through your fence. McConnell, Boner and whoever is installed in the White House will scheme around it in no time.
Immigration is not a cause of the social problems plaguing the West. It is a symptom. The root cause is a ruling elite that sees itself as a feudal elite, ruling over a vast peasantry. They see themselves atop an extraction economy, where they extract what they can from those over whom they rule. The only way to fix that is the same way troublesome elites have been fixed in the past.Replies: @MarkinLA, @Buzz Mohawk
Your argument is understandable, but oddly Marxist.
There will always be elites, in any human group of any significant size. Study group dynamics and you will find this is a basic fact. Leaders emerge.
We are a nation of laws that was built by a people of laws. The best tradition of law in the world. There is still a chance that we can change the laws that need changing, and enforce the ones that have fallen into disuse.
Repeal the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, for a start.
Build a wall, and elect leaders who will enforce it. If it’s good enough for the elites in Israel, it’s good enough for us.
Lose patience with the MSM that is owned and controlled by your elite. Communicate more, with more people. Here and beyond.
Teach.
Don’t give in to the temptation of “class warfare.” It will only cause you to overthrow one ruling class and install another.
“Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.” – The Who, Won’t Get Fooled Again
Marxist?
How about Jeffersonian? "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
But hey, I can do Marx too. "Every Patriot must grasp the truth; Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
Elites will shut down immigration when it profits them to do so or not doing so sends boiled rope sales soaring.
Such as...?
The list of politicians elected claiming they supported border enforcement then proved quite quickly they were lying their asses off is long and distinguished. In the case of US senators, that's a 6 year term in which you're stuck with some asshole who deceived the voters - think Hatch, Rubio, and Flake, among many others.
Our Constitution designed the Senate to be the place where 'the passions of the people could cool a bit.'
Well it also happens to be the perfect place for corruption to flourish. Perhaps congressional terms should all be reduced to 18 months.Replies: @Jim Don Bob
Empty water jugs litter the scores of trails leading north from the fence.
I know a family that has a hunting ranch in south Texas.
They learned long ago not to lock up the house when they aren’t there, because illegals will break windows or kick down doors to get inside. If it’s unlocked, they come in and take everything they can carry, but at least they don’t destroy anything.
BTW, Steve, while a fence in the literal sense is what it should be, I think it's better for propaganda purposes to call it a wall, because that sounds more solid.Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @iSteveFan
I think we should call it a prophylactic.
In my experience, most people YOUNGER than the Boomers are against enforcing our immigration laws.
The younger generations vote Democrat.
Compare the apprehensions between San Diego Sector (Israel style fence) and Tucson Sector (wide open desert). One is exponentially greater than the other. Of course they’re constantly messing with what an apprehension is, so you have to take that with a grain of salt.
It’s not just a fence though. Its interior enforcement as well – going into the cities and making it risky to be an illegal alien. The problem there is an amazingly complicated Memo of Understanding (MOU) between the Border Patrol and ICE where ICE takes responsibility for everything in the interior.
Problem is that ICE has pretty much ceded immigration enforcement thanks to the efforts of management and constantly shifting enforcement “priorities” that open you up to a civil suit if you deport some one you shouldn’t have. Absolutely insane.
There will always be elites, in any human group of any significant size. Study group dynamics and you will find this is a basic fact. Leaders emerge.
We are a nation of laws that was built by a people of laws. The best tradition of law in the world. There is still a chance that we can change the laws that need changing, and enforce the ones that have fallen into disuse.
Repeal the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, for a start.
Build a wall, and elect leaders who will enforce it. If it's good enough for the elites in Israel, it's good enough for us.
Lose patience with the MSM that is owned and controlled by your elite. Communicate more, with more people. Here and beyond.
Teach.
Don't give in to the temptation of "class warfare." It will only cause you to overthrow one ruling class and install another.
"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." - The Who, Won't Get Fooled AgainReplies: @The Z Blog, @Wilkey
I have nowhere suggested that there could or should be no elites. I’m merely pointing out that there are no words you can write on paper to control them. They will do as they please until it becomes untenable.
Marxist?
How about Jeffersonian? “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
But hey, I can do Marx too. “Every Patriot must grasp the truth; Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
Elites will shut down immigration when it profits them to do so or not doing so sends boiled rope sales soaring.
report and deport
call it a window
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/features/world/asia/north-korea/dmz-text/1
Even better.
“Yes, but the journey of 1000 miles starts with the first step. The first step is the fence.”
True, but I think he needs to be understood going in that the fence is only one part of a multi-pronged solution. If you go in saying that a fence will solve all of our problems, then when the fence doesn’t work 100% your enemies will say “see, we tried, and it failed.”
Indians sold New York for beans, and white sold America for beaners.
Aint that America?
If it works with lions.
And gorillas.
There will always be elites, in any human group of any significant size. Study group dynamics and you will find this is a basic fact. Leaders emerge.
We are a nation of laws that was built by a people of laws. The best tradition of law in the world. There is still a chance that we can change the laws that need changing, and enforce the ones that have fallen into disuse.
Repeal the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, for a start.
Build a wall, and elect leaders who will enforce it. If it's good enough for the elites in Israel, it's good enough for us.
Lose patience with the MSM that is owned and controlled by your elite. Communicate more, with more people. Here and beyond.
Teach.
Don't give in to the temptation of "class warfare." It will only cause you to overthrow one ruling class and install another.
"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." - The Who, Won't Get Fooled AgainReplies: @The Z Blog, @Wilkey
“Build a wall, and elect leaders who will enforce it.”
Such as…?
The list of politicians elected claiming they supported border enforcement then proved quite quickly they were lying their asses off is long and distinguished. In the case of US senators, that’s a 6 year term in which you’re stuck with some asshole who deceived the voters – think Hatch, Rubio, and Flake, among many others.
Our Constitution designed the Senate to be the place where ‘the passions of the people could cool a bit.’
Well it also happens to be the perfect place for corruption to flourish. Perhaps congressional terms should all be reduced to 18 months.
Having said that, I am sure the Left would set up condo associations to meet the above requirements.
As another poster suggested, we do not lack the means to build a wall. We could build it and staff it with volunteers, including me. A $20 billion fence is a drop in the bucket of the federal budget. The political class lacks the will.
Why can’t we have both? Then a layered defense of men granted land and homes in exchange for monitoring and catching bad guys.
Did they stop layering tracking dust on the ground inside their barriers, or is that one of those secret features they’d rather not discuss?
Do they use seismic sensors to detect tunneling? That might be another one to keep under wraps.
A lot has happened since then; now they sell high-quality, pocket-sized multitools that pretty much all come with wire-cutters. A $25 multitool will have you through a fence like that in about 30 seconds.
Here is one of the earliest Israeli fence schematics https://goo.gl/uCZinT which shows what you mention plus 6ft high pyramids of razor wire (incorrectly called barbed wire) which I am a big fan of.
Another creative use of razor wire on Israeli border https://goo.gl/5iOR6I Try getting past this!
BTW, Steve, while a fence in the literal sense is what it should be, I think it's better for propaganda purposes to call it a wall, because that sounds more solid.Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @iSteveFan
And how do we know it would be harder for the elite to engineer it if there is a serious fence in their way? Answer, they oppose it to the hilt.
I am not saying a fence is the be-all and end-all of our current demographic crisis. But if the elite oppose something so much as they do a fence, those of you who are undecided might step back and take a second look.
True, but I think he needs to be understood going in that the fence is only one part of a multi-pronged solution. If you go in saying that a fence will solve all of our problems, then when the fence doesn't work 100% your enemies will say "see, we tried, and it failed."Replies: @iSteveFan
You will note that if something from our side is not 100 percent successful, it is dismissed as a failure. Why isn’t the same rule applied to the progressives? Are all the social welfare programs 100 percent effective? Is immigration 100 percent positive? Is anything they push 100 percent positive? No, but when their policies prove to be failures, it just gives them the ammunition to double and triple down by spending more and more on their pet programs. Meanwhile, if our fence can’t be shown to be 100 percent effective, it will likely jeopardize its chances of being built.
If walls don't work why do they even exist on a conceptual level? Are effective walls millenia old hoax?Replies: @Eugene Nics
“Immigration is not a cause of the social problems plaguing the West. It is a symptom. The root cause is a ruling elite that sees itself as a feudal elite, ruling over a vast peasantry.”
Conservatives generally champion the “ruling elite” for promoting unfettered capitalism, then rail on them when they create the rules that benefits them supposedly at the expense of others. Trump is part of that “ruling elite”. He is using his marketing skills to promote a brand that seemingly is peasant-orientated. The general public is lapping it up. Wait until he becomes president and attempts to be a moderate on economic and social issues. Those same people who supported Trump will be up in arms over his supposed turn-around.
“They see themselves atop an extraction economy, where they extract what they can from those over whom they rule. The only way to fix that is the same way troublesome elites have been fixed in the past.”
Praytell, how you do propose to deal with these “troublesome elites”, those same people who historically built our country?
“Repeal the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, for a start.”
You need votes and the will. There is neither.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
The problem with that philosophy is that it easy to subjectively label people as being unpatriotic and tyrannical.
As Ann Coulter says saying walls don’t work is like saying, “shoelaces don’t work; they can become untied. Sometimes people trip.”
If walls don’t work why do they even exist on a conceptual level? Are effective walls millenia old hoax?
Well one thing elites hate is being called backward and on the wrong side of history – which is exactly where the US is on the issue of immigration control and border regulation. The US is a developed western country with a 19th Century approach to immigration and a chaotic southern border that most first and second world countries would consider an embarrassment.
Buidling the fence is part of adopting a modern, 21st century approach to immigration and border control. All developed countries close to significantly poorer or more unstable countries have tightly regulated border fences, it’s just common sense.
This is the argument that Trump needs to be spelling out to the media and the elites.
Do they use seismic sensors to detect tunneling? That might be another one to keep under wraps.A lot has happened since then; now they sell high-quality, pocket-sized multitools that pretty much all come with wire-cutters. A $25 multitool will have you through a fence like that in about 30 seconds.Replies: @Clyde
Interesting that you mention this. By now they have erected fences on their other borders. They are not all built the same but are improvements on previous fences.
Here is one of the earliest Israeli fence schematics https://goo.gl/uCZinT which shows what you mention plus 6ft high pyramids of razor wire (incorrectly called barbed wire) which I am a big fan of.
Another creative use of razor wire on Israeli border https://goo.gl/5iOR6I Try getting past this!
If walls don't work why do they even exist on a conceptual level? Are effective walls millenia old hoax?Replies: @Eugene Nics
I call tell you that the walls in my house are imaginary. Gee, if I were a ghost or something, I could just float on through that wall, let me promise you.
Such as...?
The list of politicians elected claiming they supported border enforcement then proved quite quickly they were lying their asses off is long and distinguished. In the case of US senators, that's a 6 year term in which you're stuck with some asshole who deceived the voters - think Hatch, Rubio, and Flake, among many others.
Our Constitution designed the Senate to be the place where 'the passions of the people could cool a bit.'
Well it also happens to be the perfect place for corruption to flourish. Perhaps congressional terms should all be reduced to 18 months.Replies: @Jim Don Bob
I suggest we disenfranchise women and any men who own less than 1/7 acre of real property.
Having said that, I am sure the Left would set up condo associations to meet the above requirements.
As another poster suggested, we do not lack the means to build a wall. We could build it and staff it with volunteers, including me. A $20 billion fence is a drop in the bucket of the federal budget. The political class lacks the will.
Just to note that the commenter Clyde’s observation that Israelis build fences not walls is incorrect. Most of the separation barrier, e.g. wall between Israel proper and the Palestinian areas is a wall, a very tall wall. See here: http://www.tadamon.ca/post/7576 While the fence on the north, with Gaza, and with Egypt in the Sinai is a fence. That is just a matter of economics for the most part as a wall is more expensive to build than a fence. Note though that the very tall concrete slab wall, up to 26 feet tall, smooth faced, and something that cannot be climbed or descended. Basically even if you get up, getting down on the other side will end in injury. Because of this, fewer patrols are necessary. In comparison to the northern fence, Gaza fence, and Sinai fence, those must be more actively patrolled, as steel mesh and barbed wire can be easily cut. That is one of the disadvantages of wire see-through fencing, the other is that the other side can see in as well, resulting in smugglers and illegal crossers observing the patrolling forces, as well as terrorists able to observe and attack patrolling forces.
You are dead wrong. The first Israeli security fence was built between Israel and the West bank. You are referring to this fence. It is a wall in select places such as urban areas and where Palestinian snipers were a concern, but it is 90% on up super enhanced fencing. Not wall but fencing.
SOURCE WIKIPEDIA
Looks like a wall to me: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/01/01/arts/ouro.583.1.jpg
http://www.traveladventures.org/countries/palestinian-territories/images/israeli-wall14.jpg
I did notice the fence at the top of the wall though.
https://palestinediaries.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/wall.jpg
And a pretty long wall:
http://www.mirak-weissbach.de/News/Op-Ed-The-Israeli-Wall_files/wall-is-pal.jpg
A wall is a wall, don’t let your lying eyes deceive you.
Looks like a wall to me:
I did notice the fence at the top of the wall though.
And a pretty long wall: