Where there's a will, there's a way

[Realitycheck]

I refer to our new system of fencing along the Southwest border, and the continuous successes to circumvent it by any means thinkable. My first reaction is that, well, it's not fortified enough, not a good enough fence. One of the rough drafts I saw of the fence is that it was supposed to be a double layered fence, 12 ft. apart, with lots of razor wire around it. You know, the kind with electricity running through it and sensors placed every 100 ft. for when someone tries to break in. Of course, when you have a 3,000 pound battering ram around you, it really changes the dynamics of everything.

 

Judging by this article I have read, this fence doesn't quite compare. The fence repair people are kept extremely busy. The smugglers will do anything, even building 14 ft. ramps to jump cars over the fence. It seems all for naught, but when you've been accustomed to having it so easy for so long, when the going gets tough ... I guess you have a choice. Give up or pay some underprivileged Mexican 50 bucks to do the unthinkable. I mean, it's only 50 kilos of heroin we're talking about ... or whatever.

 

It's really all about the war of control, the free vs. the law. Who wins? Civilization wasn't won over in a day. We still have pockets of stiff resistance. The needs of the few outweigh the well-being of the many, of course! Why didn't we all think of that? Let's just all slit each others throats in a free-for-all trying to take anything and everything we can see!

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080309/us_nm/usa_border_smugglers_dc

[ecoli]

It comes down to manpower... we can't ship our boarder guards off to Iraq and expect our boarder to be protected.

I hear a lot of talk from the republicans about 'securing the boarder' but not much action.

[iNow]

It's also a 200 year old idea trying to actually "build a fence." How about you implement some smart technology, eh? Trying to ruin the beautiful vistas with some concrete and razor wire will hardly improve immigration issues and border security... They'll just buy bigger ladders.

[NeonBlack]

200 year old idea???

 

iNow, haven't you ever heard of the Great Wall?

[Pangloss]

Hehe, I think you have to give him a nod on that one, iNow. But I know what you meant, 200 years in this country, and you're right.

 

Unfortunately our "smart technology" has been tried in a few places and doesn't seem to be working out too well. The virutal fence has been more or less a failure thus far, over budget and under-performing. But I tend to agree with you that a technological solution is the way to go there, for both logistical reasons and for humanitarian ones.

[Phi for All]

Did you see the episode of Penn & Teller's BULLSHIT that addressed the border fence issue? Lol, they paid a US contractor and six illegals to build a twenty foot section fourteen feet high, using plans obtained from a contractor who had built part of the border fence in California. It took them all day.

 

Then Penn & Teller split the team into three groups, two guys to go over the fence, two to go under and two to go through. They each got one pair of tin snips. None of the groups took more than five minutes to penetrate the fence.

 

Btw, building the border fence is so lucrative that the contractor who built the stretch below San Diego still made a profit on his contract after paying a US$5M fine. Seems he was caught using illegal immigrants to build the wall to hold back illegal immigrants.

[iNow]

iNow, haven't you ever heard of the Great Wall?

Wo renshi zhongguo chengchang, xie xie.

[Pangloss]

Then Penn & Teller split the team into three groups, two guys to go over the fence, two to go under and two to go through. They each got one pair of tin snips. None of the groups took more than five minutes to penetrate the fence.

 

Yup. Although I think it's gotten to the point now where the idea that we cannot build a fence has become an assumption when it's actually not true at all, it's just a simple matter of cost effectiveness offset by bureaucratic inefficiency. I don't see people slipping into Fort Knox and stealing all the gold on a daily basis. Technology isn't the problem, it's cost and will.

 

Also I think there is a problem definition issue in play here. We get caught up in political absolutes, like "stopping terrorists at the border", when really the goal should not be stopping all border incursions -- it should be stopping mass border incursions, and making it more difficult for terrorists to get in that way, so that they prefer other (more trackable) methods.

 

Put another way, if crossing the Mexican border were something that produced a 90%, or even a 50%, chance of capture, a highly trained terrorist involved in a long-term plan would never risk it, opting instead for things like false passports or even a legal means (if his association with terrorism is not known to authorities). But a Mexican worker in that situation would still make that crossing, since if he failed he could just go back again the next day (as they do now). And those in-between captures would put the Mexican worker in the system where he could be tracked (if he decides to, say, start getting drunk and running into school buses).

 

This is why I think it's a bit ridiculous for conservatives to insist on a closed border before offering "amnesty" to current in-country illegals -- we don't need the border to be fully closed, and we probably don't want it to be. It's better if we leave small "gaps" that we KNOW about and can track (as opposed to thinking it's closed and finding out later that it really wasn't).

 

But I think vast improvement IS called for and can be achieved with quite realistic budgets.

[Mr Skeptic]

Well, there's also the problem of all the immigrants that go to the US (legally), for college, but then decide to stay (illegally) for work. The fence wouldn't help with that.

[Pangloss]

An excellent point. It's not a small number, either, as I understand it, and some post-9/11 efforts to improve visa tracking have lead to borderline harassment of legally-operating aliens in the country. All of these issues have to be handled, and they need to be handled in a non-partisan, non-ideological manner, or they'll just keep coming up every time a new administration (or challenger) decides it needs a political football to play with.

[Severian]

How about you implement some smart technology, eh?

 

What do you have in mind? Automated gun turrets and motion sensors?

[Sisyphus]

Yup. Although I think it's gotten to the point now where the idea that we cannot build a fence has become an assumption when it's actually not true at all, it's just a simple matter of cost effectiveness offset by bureaucratic inefficiency. I don't see people slipping into Fort Knox and stealing all the gold on a daily basis. Technology isn't the problem, it's cost and will.

 

You might be right. On the other hand, I'm trying to imagine taking the budget and manpower of Fort Knox and multiplying it by the ratio between the circumference of the fort and the U.S.-Mexico border. It probably wouldn't be that difficult, but the point is it might still be something we literally can't afford.

 

Put another way, if crossing the Mexican border were something that produced a 90%, or even a 50%, chance of capture, a highly trained terrorist involved in a long-term plan would never risk it, opting instead for...

 

...crossing the Canadian border? Seriously, though, while I agree your general assessment and your specific guess that, say, a 50% failure rate would be enough to deter a terrorist, I seriously doubt a terrorist would use that route even today. For one thing, there's the aforementioned, largely unwatched 5500-mile swath to the north. Second, Mexicans have a high success rate in crossing because there are networks in place to help them along. A terrorist would have to first infiltrate Mexican society and convincingly portray someone in desperate need of a higher paying job (maybe he could acquire a hungry family with lots of medical bills) before even making the attempt. And finally, I'm guessing a terrorist on a 9/11-like mission would have a much easier time if he could interact with society in a traceable manner anyway, which someone with illegal status couldn't do. There are already easier ways. And you would have to be quite an super agent, which frankly I don't think terrorist groups like Al Qaeda really have, since intelligent people capable of subtly don't hold ideologies like theirs...

[iNow]

What do you have in mind? Automated gun turrets and motion sensors?

 

Not particularly, no. Preferably something which is not so easy to climb over, dig under, walk around, or blast through. Also, something which doesn't block the view would be great, but that's more of a "nice to have" than a "critical need."

[Pangloss]

...crossing the Canadian border?

 

True, but I'm sure Al Qaeda hasn't forgotten what happened when they tried that.

 

 

Mexicans have a high success rate in crossing because there are networks in place to help them along. A terrorist would have to first infiltrate Mexican society and convincingly portray someone in desperate need of a higher paying job (maybe he could acquire a hungry family with lots of medical bills) before even making the attempt.

 

Perhaps. I've read accounts of Mexicans sometimes receiving support from smugglers, but I've never read anything that smugglers check the nationalities of their customers, cast them out if they're of arab descent, and so forth.

 

 

And finally, I'm guessing a terrorist on a 9/11-like mission would have a much easier time if he could interact with society in a traceable manner anyway, which someone with illegal status couldn't do. There are already easier ways.

 

Which is why we need to crack down across the board.

[Mr Skeptic]

Perhaps. I've read accounts of Mexicans sometimes receiving support from smugglers, but I've never read anything that smugglers check the nationalities of their customers, cast them out if they're of arab descent, and so forth.

 

A smuggler needs to make sure that they are helping out a bona fide illegal alien. They can't afford to show their route to an agent who might get them all imprisoned.

[Pangloss]

A smuggler needs to make sure that they are helping out a bona fide illegal alien. They can't afford to show their route to an agent who might get them all imprisoned.

 

Nah, they're just watching for cops, they don't care whom they transport, so long as they have the cash. This is intuitively obvious.