Friday, November 09, 2012

Border Patrol

 

I don't want to wear that donkey picture out, but nothing else fits. And I would leave the politics alone, but I haven't had this much fun since Nixon resigned.

Three people who've never been near the Texas-Mexico (or the rest of the country) border, starting with Mr. 9/11:

Giuliani: The reality is, we just need the political will to do it. It's a 2,000-mile border. It isn't that big. If you took about 20,000 border patrol agents and you put them in substations about every fifty miles, you'd be able to cover the border -- maybe even every twenty-five miles -- and then you'd use photographic equipment, nighttime photography, heat-seeking equipment, motion-detection equipment. You'd alert the people at the stations, they'd go there and stop people from coming in.
Hannity: It's that easy! It really is, that, it's --
Giuliani: It's a matter of political will. When I was running for president, I said that it would be easier to control illegal immigration than it was to reduce homicide in New York by fifty percent.
Okay, to be fair, that was well before Tuesday, well before the GOP realized they had a "demographics problem.".  Since then Sean Hannity has seen the light on immigration:

"I think you control the border first," he said on his radio show Thursday evening. "You create a pathway for those people that are here — you don’t say you’ve got to go home. And that is a position that I’ve evolved on."
And so has Charles Krauthammer:

For the party in general, however, the problem is hardly structural. It requires but a single policy change: Border fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. Use the word. Shock and awe -- full legal normalization (just short of citizenship) in return for full border enforcement.
Let me start with that river, because of the 1900 mile border, almost 2/3rds of it is with Texas (yes, the state is that big).   If you saw "No Country for Old Men," you know how literally impossible it would be to put a fence and guards along it, a la the Berlin Wall.  It isn't just the distance, it's the (in some places) mountainous terrain.  But the other problem is, people live along that border; and they cross it everyday.

This should come as no surprise to people living near a state border.  When I lived in southern Illinois, I crossed into Missouri daily.  It's no different for people living on the Rio Grande.  They cross into Mexico, or into Texas, on a daily basis.  Turn that into Berlin during the Cold War, or Gaza and the West Bank, and do you expect the Hispanics on this side of the fence to thank you?

Logistically, it's ridiculous.  Politically, it's condescending.  Look, you Hispanics who are here are okay, and just as soon as we keep any more of you from coming in, we can arrange amnesty!  Now help us shut this gate, will ya?  In fact, why don't you shut it for us?

You people are so much better at that sort of thing than we are.

I bet we could even get 'em to enforce the border!

Honestly, this is better than Nixon resigning.  This is almost like George McGovern winning.

1 comment:

  1. Sherri2:47 AM

    The ACLU of Washington has filed a civil rights suit against the Border Patrol because they've pulling people over and interrogating them without cause on the Olympic Peninsula (driving while Hispanic). The Olympic Peninsula is a long ways from the Rio Grande, and far enough away from the Canadian border that I wondered what the Border Patrol was doing there. Then I found out that the Border Patrol's jurisdiction is huge: http://www.aclu.org/constitution-free-zone-map.

    ReplyDelete