March 30, 2006

Two Walls That Pass In the Night

Hatched by Dafydd

"Atrocious Analogies" is the new topic of the day, mostly sparked by Captain Ed's otherwise excellent post George Will: Ich Bin Ein Ost-Berliner? -- both the atrocious analogy he accuses George Will of making, and the atrocious analogy that Ed himself makes!

Cap'n's "analogy" has been raised by a number of people opposed to the Senate J-Com's immigration plan and supportive of a "wall" (or fence) along the American southern border to keep out illegals, and that makes it worth discussing.

Ed's post is actually good; I especially like this point, noting the need for much stronger border control:

No illegal will enter a program that costs him significant fines and back taxes when all he has to do is stay quiet and keep crossing the border in both directions as he sees fit. As for learning English, that would certainly be a novel approach; we don't even make our legal immigrants do that any more, as evidenced by ballots in a plethora of languages and government-sponsored translators at all level of public services. [Emphasis added]

As you know -- or should, if you've been reading -- I too support such a wall, and for the same reasons Ed does (and George Will does, too); so my objection to Captain Ed's analogy is not ideological. It's literary: I think the Captain Ed analogy squashes conversation nearly as badly as does Will's, and both should be tossed in the dustbin of rhetorical history.

All right, all right, I'll tell you what they are. You demanding readers take all the mystery out of blogposts!

George Will makes his conservative case for the moderate approach to immigration reform, giving enough room for hard-line enforcement while arguing for eventual absorption of the illegals already inside the US. However, he starts out with an almost unforgivable analogy that will have border-enforcement readers seeing red before they ever get to the rest of his arguments:

America, the only developed nation that shares a long -- 2,000-mile -- border with a Third World nation, could seal that border. East Germany showed how: walls, barbed wire, machine gun-toting border guards in towers, mine fields, large, irritable dogs. And we have modern technologies that East Germany never had: sophisticated sensors, unmanned surveillance drones, etc.

That is, of course, the allegedly atrocious analogy that George Will made. Actually, it's not really atrocious: it is merely unfortunate. It wrongly invokes the image of a prison-country like the Soviet Union (and its satellite, East Germany), which repugnant image blinds otherwise rational folks like Captain Ed to the point Will is really trying to make... which is simply that such brutal force is what you need to prevent a large number of people from passing a wall -- it makes no difference which direction.

I'm no great admirer of Will; I think he's the most overrated supposed "thinker" of the supposed "conservative" persuasion. And this is one reason why: he is so enamored of the sound of his own typing that he really doesn't spend much time thinking at all.

My own dam analogy is much better: building a wall to stop immigration without also building a gate through the wall for the decent, law-abiding, and hard-working is like building a dam across a river -- without building a spillway for the water.

The lake you create will rise and rise, until eventually it will overtop the dam (a word I just learned recently in the brouhaha about the New Orleans levees), causing a horrific cascade over the top that will likely cause a catastrophic breach (a word I already knew). The water must go somewhere; it won't flow back upriver.

In reality, we really are talking about what George Will suggested: machine guns, minefields, razor-wire, helicopters, a huge military force diverted to the border (the Border Patrol cannot handle it, even at ten times its present size)... and a huge number of dead children, women, and men whose only crime was -- they wanted to live in "freedom." And it won't work anyway: there is no wall so strong that a million people pushing won't knock it down.

But wait, ab Hugh (I hear you ask), you said you support the wall. What gives?

I support a wall -- but only as part of a comprehensive solution that also includes three things:

  1. A guest-worker program to temporarily admit those who just want to work here then migrate back across the border again;
  2. A clearly defined path to citizenship -- neither arbitrary, nor racially or nationality based -- for those decent, honest, hard-working immigrants who want to live the American ideal;
  3. Some mechanism to regularize those immigrants among the 12 million illegals who actually want to become citizens and at least register and regulate the rest, who only want to be guest workers.

(Note that I am now clearly separating 1 from 2.)

Once we have a door that the deserving can open, I have no objection to using Blackhawks and Predators on the felons still climbing through the windows.

I have an analogy for you, I hear you suggest: how about the walls separating Gaza and he West Bank from Israel? Aren't you in favor of those, too? Isn't that the real analogy?

Funny you should mention that. Here is what Captain Ed wrote:

Israel's border with the West Bank and Gaza provide a much clearer analogy. First and foremost, it's built to keep people out, not create a nation of prisoners. It also provides deterrence from illegal crossings, forcing Palestinians towards well-manned checkpoints where security reaches maximum efficiency. The idea is not to kill Palestinian crossers, but to keep them from trying to enter Israel illegally at all. And, by the way, it works; it has been the single most important tool the Israelis had in ending the intifadas. (And by the way, it's hard to argue that Israel isn't a developed nation, that the Palestinian territories aren't a Third World area, or that their border is less significant to Israel's national defense than our southern border.)

But it's easy to argue the one terrible flaw that spoils everything about this analogy: there are no hordes of decent, law-abiding, and hard-working Palestinians desperate to emmigrate to Israel. There is only one group of people trying to breach that wall: terrorists who want to butcher Jews by the thousands, if they only could, and drive them into the sea.

They let through a small number of day-workers, who must leave again at night. And that's pretty much it.

Israel protects its wall with soldiers, machine guns, and minefields... and it's perfectly proper to do so, since the only people likely to get killed are illegal combatants, terrorists, and mass murderers. There is no million people trying to knock down the Israeli "security fence;" there is a small group of a few hundred, and they're all people who deserve to die. (Yes, every human life has value; but sometimes, that "value" is a negative number.)

And that makes all the difference. A wall across our southern border may well work; I'm in favor of trying. But only under the circumstances I mentioned above. And in any event, there is no valid analogy at all with the wall that Israel built (is building), because they need only keep out bad guys -- while we need not only to do that but also to channel the hundreds of thousands of good guys. We need a dam with a spillway; Israel only needs a seawall.

There is one more atrocious analogy that I must highlight; again, it comes from Captain Ed's post -- and I really do like the post, if only the Captain (and George Will) would take better thought on their analogizing:

The rest of Will's column fares better, although I disagree with his emphasis on what will be an amnesty program in practice, if not in name.

A while back (I mean about twenty-five years ago) I read an article about "swinger" parties, which I must confess I know about only at second-hand, alas. Those are gatherings where a number of adults come to, well, copulate with each other in various permutations. The only money collected is whatever is necessary to buy the chips and soda (or whatever they drink at such places); the participants at the one in question were all middle-aged, middle-income folks who just liked sex a lot.

A politician was demanding that the city of Los Angeles ban such parties (in the city that contains Hollywood? fat chance!) And in the course of his argument to the LA City Council, he found occasion to declare that --

It's exactly like prostitution, except no money changes hands!

(I don't have the clipping in front of me, but the words are seared, seared in my brain. Along with another one that I'll reveal at the end.)

Captain, Captain... "amnesty" means a general pardon; and a "pardon" means to exempt from penalty, to let an offense pass without punishment.

It is impossible by definition for a program that fines lawbreakers to be an "amnesty" -- neither in name nor practice.

Folks can argue that the fines aren't stiff enough, or maybe that there should be prison time in some cases; but if punishment is meted out at all -- and a $2,000 fine is pretty stiff for such poor people -- then it ain't amnesty! (Even if the business pays it, then the business is being fined for the crime of hiring illegals.)

So let's either stuff the analogies back in the sack, or at least spend some time to come up with new ones that better fit the circumstances. These hoary, old cliches are bursting at the seams. Let's take the high road and win one for the Gipper, give it the old college try and put our thinking caps on. All's well that ends well!

(Oh, I almost forgot: back in 1984, I was at a conference on George Orwell at the Los Angeles World Science Fiction Convention. During the discussion of Orwell's chastisement of various leftist pamphleteers for their inelegant use of language, one anguished audience member leapt up and declared, "they're literally raping the language! They're literally raping the language!" Then he sat down again. Friend Lee and I were the only two spectators to burst out laughing.)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, March 30, 2006, at the time of 4:53 PM

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» A Chance For A Better Life from All Things Beautiful
Meanwhile back at the ranch, NYT is worried about the GOP loosing the Hispanic vote. Tom Maguire is not impressed. Rick Moran is saddened by the "take back" movement, and California Conservative is debating the citizenship issue. George Will has a sens... [Read More]

Tracked on March 31, 2006 2:26 AM

» A Chance For A Better Life from All Things Beautiful
Meanwhile back at the ranch, NYT is worried about the GOP loosing the Hispanic vote. Tom Maguire is not impressed. Rick Moran is saddened by the "take back" movement, and California Conservative is debating the citizenship issue. George Will has a sens... [Read More]

Tracked on March 31, 2006 2:33 AM

Comments

The following hissed in response by: senorlechero

Dafydd ...I am in complete agreement with you on this...except for one tiny item.........a wall will not work without a huge increase in manpower to watch the wall.

Perhaps you have seen "the wall" along sections of the border, perhaps not, but I have, many time. I have sat in line at the border, waiting to return to the U.S. of A., and watched as groups of youths formed human ladders so an "illegal" could climb over the wall, only to drop the 25-30 foot down the other side.

There are also tunnels under the wall, many of them, mostly used by drug smugglers, but also by "coyotes", or illegal smugglers. We would need 3 to 4 times the number of agents that are currently watching the border.

All of this is why I support a combination of actual wall and virtual wall.

Other than that I have no bones with your comments

The above hissed in response by: senorlechero [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 30, 2006 10:02 PM

The following hissed in response by: cubanbob

This nonsense bandied about in the Senate is just that, nonsense.
Curtailing illegal immigration is relatively simple matter to do, but it's needs serious and effective measures to accomplish the goal. We are not there yet.
To truly stem the tide we need three basic areas of control to make this work and all three need to be done simultaneously:
1-Financial controls.
A-Money transfer services must be brought under stricter control. If it becomes to hard for illegals to send money back, the main goal of coming here becomes besides the point.
B-Banking and other forms of legalized savings, check cashing, payroll deposits must be made much more difficult for illegals. If you can't get paid and save money then you can't send the money home, again taking away the main goal of illegal aliens coming here.
C-make the penalties for employers and the money launderers who facilitate the transactions a lot harsher than the current ones.

2-Physical Controls:
A-The obvious, a wall on the border.
B-Vastly increasing the number of border agents and immigration agents throughout the country to find and arrest illegals. This would have to include deputizing all police and government employees at the local and state level who's employer receive federal money. Or those branches of local government loose all federal aid and have the local residents forgo the right to deduct taxes and fees paid to same from their federal income taxes and loose matching federal funds for joint aid programs such as welfare.
C-Facilitating voluntary repatriation of all illegal aliens who choose this option at government expense. Sweeten this option by both paying the return fare home and giving them a small grant to bring their possesions home including repatriating savings and earnings made here and not having the repatriation be a black mark for those repatriated who then choose to apply for legal immigration.
D-Increasing the number of prisons at the federal level for States to send illegal aliens convicted of state crimes. Make the federal government assume responsibilty for guarding the prisoners, then deporting them at the conculsion of sentence.

3-Legal Disincentives:
A-Grant a limited amnesty for those who apply with the follwing conditions:
A-a-never be eligible for citizenship.
A-b-never be eligible for government benefits such as social security,welfare,medicare,medicaid etc.
In other words no form of government cash benefits.
B-No citizenship for their children born here.
C-Disallow private entities and persons any direct federal aid for those who aid and encourage illegal immigration.
D-Disallow private entities and persons tax exempt status, charitable status and the right to receive free of taxes any monies from other tax exempt or deferred persons or entities that aid and encourage illegal immigration.

Make illegal immigration unpleasant and unprofitable and they won't come.

The above hissed in response by: cubanbob [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 30, 2006 10:22 PM

The following hissed in response by: Mr. Michael

On a wall:

A wall on the Southern US Border would not be to keep immigrants out... it would be to funnel them to legal entry points, where US Border Agents could check to make sure they were not bringing in contraband, bombs, weapons, etc. and to ensure that they have followed the existing paths to legal immigration. I think all plans so far include increased numbers of LEGALLY SANCTIONED immigration; you can argue about how MANY, but to ignore the legal option is silly and misleading.

On Amnesty:

"It is impossible by definition for a program that fines lawbreakers to be an "amnesty" -- neither in name nor practice." ~Dafyyd

Um, actually Dafyyd, purchasing an amnesty has a long established tradition in the world. Not often in use here in the US, but it has been a useful way of clearing charges brought for centuries. Amnesty is indeed a "general pardon" for past crimes, but they are not freely given by definition. Nobody argues that there should not be some form of payment, it's just that most Border Law Enforcement folks say that the price paid should be that the lawbreaker should start their attempt at entry over again from the country of origin, not at the ATM.

On forcing employers to weed out illegal workers:

No corporation that I know of is empowered to decide which Social Security Cards are in order and which are falsified. As mentioned over at Michelle Malkin's site today, so called "Undocumented Workers" have PLENTY of documents, although most of them may be fraudulent. Saying that you are going to crack down on employers for hiring illegal aliens is to assume that those employees are being employed without documentation. This is just not the case... and it is the reason the employer-screening portion of the existing law cannot be enforced either.

And finally, I bring up a question posed by Rush Limbaugh on the issue of immigration. The 'new' proposals are being brought forth because of an assumed inability to do anything about the folks already here; "You cannot deport 12 million people" is the cry. Assume that there ARE 12 mil here, assume that you cannot deport them all. Fine. Then what exactly do you propose to do with the folks who do not comply with the 'new' programs? I think it would be nice to hear what the implied "Or Else" to this 'new' program would be... and if we have the public will to use those tools to enforce the new laws.

If we cannot, or will not, enforce the new law, what is it's use beyond political masturbation?

The above hissed in response by: Mr. Michael [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 30, 2006 10:56 PM

The following hissed in response by: Bill Faith

Dafydd,

I'm going to put off my next blog post on this subject till I've had some sleep (I quit updating this post just before midnight), but there is one point I want to make now.

Your dam analogy doesn't hold water (pun recognized, but I mean it.) If we had the national will to do it we *could* seal our borders and rid the country of the vast majority of those currently here illegally. If we were to put up an East-German style barrier backed by a willingness to use deadly force to defend it we could cut the flood at our border to a trickle. We could then induce the majority of the illegals already in the country to self-deport, using stiff penalties against employing anyone without proper papers, requiring proof of the right to be here for money transfers in or out of the country, and providing free transportation home for those who decide being here illegally just isn't any fun any more. I'm not saying I expect to see that happen, or even that I think it *should* happen (although I lean more in that direction than you do), just that it *could* be done. Right now I can't shoot any gaping holes in your arguments that doing so would not be in our best national interest, or even my personal best interest -- I'm part of that "aging baby boomer" crowd wondering who's going to put money into the Social Security system so Uncle Sugar can send me some -- just that we *could* if we chose to. I'll support your "spillway" for economic and humanitarian reasons, but I will not accept the argument that it's absolutely necessary. Maybe I just have more confidence in this country's ability to do what's necessary than you do. Realistically your dam model is probably the best we can really hope for.

The above hissed in response by: Bill Faith [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 31, 2006 1:52 AM

The following hissed in response by: mbnyan

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. George Will is not making an analogy. He is using an example to show that there are technical solutions to keep people from crossing an international border.

The above hissed in response by: mbnyan [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 31, 2006 2:31 AM

The following hissed in response by: Papa Ray

Theorys abound about how to manage illegals (and legals) in the U.S.

But in order to manage, you have to be able to identify the players. How many John Smiths or Jose Garcias are here in the U.S. or Want in?
How do you identify the John or Jose that is the upstanding family man or is the child rapist? How do you identify the John or Jose that is already an American citizen or if they are criminals, legal students, workers or someone else?

Without positive identification that is at least two layers thick, that is impossible.

What is positive ID? Not any kind of documentation that can not be verified. When my daughter sent someone else to take the drivers test, she wasn't caught (ok, so it was a few years ago, but it would still work). When Jose is one of ten thousand Joses, half which are already here, half are treking in as we speak, how do you identify them?

Pictures are good, but you try it, hell I don't even look like my picture on my drivers lisense. The ways to ID people are well known. The terrorists are really good at forging documentation and the same services are available to illegals. Positive ID is limited to fingerprints, Retinal scanning analyses, DNA, dental records. So unless you have the means to verify positive ID on a person, you don't know who your dealing with when you arrest them, process them for lisences, stop them on the street, admit them into your jail, process them for a loan, interview them for a job or hire them for that job.

So, until a positive ID method and all the millions of dollars worth of personel, equipment and databases are up and running, ol' Jose and John will remain unidentifiable.

Oh, on building the wall and a few other things, Chuck had a few things to say about it back last December.

Read it, besides being a real American hero, he knows what he is taking about.

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA

The above hissed in response by: Papa Ray [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 31, 2006 6:36 AM

The following hissed in response by: Big D

What makes us rich and illegals poor? Why don't Americans cross the border illegally into Mexico?

The answer is we simply have a better and less corrupt system of government.

The solution? Millions of poor potential migrant workers in Mexico no longer try to cross to the US, but march en mass on Mexico City and demand that the government of Mexico immediately petition to join the United States as one of several new states in the Union.

After careful negotiation it is agreed that Mexico will join the U.S, as 20 or so new member states. A 15 year transition period is declared where border controls will remain in place, and American laws are implemented in Mexico.

Massive public and private investment surges into Mexico. Millions of jobs are created. Conditions in the poor villages improve dramatically. Millions of American retirees begin to relocate south. Oil and industrial production surges on new investment. Mexican illegals already in the US become citizens, significantly reducing the vast number of illegals here to readily deportable numbers.

In 15 years we tear down the border, problem solved, everyone happy.

Of course now we have a border problem with Guatemala...but this is a easily repeatable program.

What prevents this from happening? Only fear, pride, and greed.

The above hissed in response by: Big D [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 31, 2006 9:55 AM

The following hissed in response by: American Patrol

The first step for someone who has grown obese is stop gaining weight. I’m not as concerned about 13 million illegal aliens as I am 30 million illegals in 10 years.

Amnesty(but not amnesty), temporarily worker programs, fines or laws against employers who hire illegals wont be worth a hill of beans if you don’t put a halt to the flow of to people crossing the border illegally.

The bill in Congress proposes 700 miles worth of a wall/fence. While it won’t be impermeable I assume it will at least difficult to negotiate. That leaves 1,300 miles of open space. Also proposed are increasing border agents from 12,500 to 14,000.

Estimates vary but many put it at about half a million illegal immigrants crossing the border a year, averaging 1370 illegal border crossings per day.

With about one million apprehensions a year in which 97% of those are along the Mexican border, we have about a million illegal aliens apprehended along the US-Mexico border. Adding the successful and unsuccessful together, there are 1.5 million human beings (minus children) every year making a conscious decision to embark on a journey in which that have 1 in 3 chance of actually making it, or a 2 in 3 chance of getting caught.

We will never likely seal the border, since not even the Berlin Wall was 100% impermeable. But I would feel comfortable if our chances of catching an illegal border crosser rose from 66% to 95%. That would cut the flow from half a million a year to 75,000 a year. But that number is inflated because 1.5 million border crosser do so knowing they have a 1 in 3 chance of success, and odds say they will make it if the try 3 times. I’m not sure if any potential illegal border crosser wants to face almost certain capture in which the odds say that would not make it until their 20th try, and instead choose a legal form of migration.

Back to the numbers I will try to figure if the current proposals will bring a 95% capture rate.

2,000 miles of border with 12,500 border patrol agents currently results in a 66% capture rate on the 4,110 daily border crossers. Meaning it takes 6.2 agents per mile to capture 1.3 illegal border crossers in that mile while allowing .7 of them to get through.

With a wall/fence and 1,500 additional agents, that leaves us with 1,300 miles of border with 14,000 agents, raising the agents per mile to 10.7, resulting in a whopping 75% increase of effective man power. If you throw in the potential success spending 100 million, or $50,000 per mile on cameras, sensors, and other surveillance technology I would say we are at least doubling our border force.

However, doubling your capacity to catch illegal aliens does not correlate at all with the actually ability to catch them. This phenomenon is known as the law of diminishing returns. The good news is you can calculate the diminishing factor on your results with the proper data. The bad news is the data on border security enforcement and a year by year number of illegal border crossings and attempts going back the past two decades are not nearly accurate enough.

Simply put it is impossible to say what the affect will be by increasing border patrol agents per mile from 6.2 to 10.7 with the addition of 100 million dollars worth of new technology will be.

But let me ask an open question. If we can build a 700 mile fence, why in the world can’t we build a 2,000 mile fence?

- The American Patrol
www.american-patrol.blogspot.com

The above hissed in response by: American Patrol [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 31, 2006 1:37 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Mr. Michael:

No corporation that I know of is empowered to decide which Social Security Cards are in order and which are falsified. As mentioned over at Michelle Malkin's site today, so called "Undocumented Workers" have PLENTY of documents, although most of them may be fraudulent. Saying that you are going to crack down on employers for hiring illegal aliens is to assume that those employees are being employed without documentation. This is just not the case... and it is the reason the employer-screening portion of the existing law cannot be enforced either.

Ah, but this is fixable. This is part of the high-tech reforms I also advocate.

For example, all government docs (SS card, immigration card, and suchlike) should be replaced with biometric-encoded intellicards with encoded fingerprints and photos.

(This isn't a "government ID card," by the way, because not everybody would be required to carry one or even have one. Just those who work -- exactly like the Social Security card today. It wouldn't track your movements, nor would you use it to get in or out of the country.)

The first time an empoyer hires a particular employee, he slides the card into the reader, and a photo pops upon his monitor. He looks to see if it looks the same.

The applicant puts his thumb on a glass plate, and the employer either see a green light (on his screen) or a red light.

In the meantime, the card pings the federal database of issuants: the database queries the card with an encrypted string, and the card squawks an encrypted response. If the response is one of the acceptable ones (each card would have a different range of responses to a unique range of queries keyed to that card), the employer sees another green light, and the employee is verified.

Thereafter, he can just show up at work each day. If there is question, the employer asks to see his card again: his reader stores all the current-employee card data. Make it mandatory that all non-citizens carry their cards whenever they are working.

The federal database would store all pings and the result ("valid" or "invalid"). The USCIS can show up at the employer's door with a portable reader with wireless connection (or a download of the current database) and spot-check any or all employees; this will tell them whether the employees went through the validation process or not. Likewise, the employer's privately owned card reader maintains a copy of all queries it has conducted, and the employer gets a hardcopy mailed to him that he can keep for legal purposes.

This would be absolutely foolproof: fools wouldn't be able to break it. It wouldn't be geniusproof, of course; but nothing would be. It would be tremendously better than what we have now, though, and it would be easy and quick for the employer to validate each worker as a citizen, an immigrant, or a guest worker.

Therefore, we can mandate that they do so.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 31, 2006 4:18 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Mr. Michael:

Then what exactly do you propose to do with the folks who do not comply with the 'new' programs? I think it would be nice to hear what the implied "Or Else" to this 'new' program would be... and if we have the public will to use those tools to enforce the new laws.

See previous comment.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 31, 2006 4:20 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Bill Faith:

I think what I and others mean by the shorthand "we can't seal the border" is that we can't do it -- and still remain what any of us would recognize as the United States of America.

If we were willing to machine-gun a bunch of families trying to rush across the border, knowing we would kill dozens of children, five or six mothers (perhaps with babes in arms), and five or six fathers who only want a better life for their families... then we would be such a changed country, we may as well change the name.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 31, 2006 4:25 PM

The following hissed in response by: Bill Faith

Big D:

So all we have to do is give Mexico 30 Senate seats and a couple of hundred
House seats and the problem will go away? Unfortunately for your plan there are
still too many right-wing whackos like me around for plan like that to ever be
ratified by enough of the existing states to make it happen. Que lastima!


Dafydd,

I wouldn't be especially proud to live in a country capable of doing that
either, which is why I favor a barrier substantial enough to make it
unnecessary. I think we do have the ability, if we have the will, to construct
a barrier difficult enough to cross, linked to enough electronic technology,
and backed by enough cops or soldiers, to cut the flow down to a negligible
trickle. I'll agree the dam needs spillways, as you've put it, and we seem to
be on the same side of the ID issue.

By the way, have y'all seen this site?


The above hissed in response by: Bill Faith [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 31, 2006 5:41 PM

The following hissed in response by: Bill Faith

I linked from Up against the wall, or just a dam?.

Dafydd, I think a lot of our differences hinge on our perceptions of what
percentage of the people entering this country illegally just want honest work and what percentage have other intentions. If you haven't checked out this site and this one yet I wish you would. It's been over twenty years since I was anyplace west of Texas so I'm not in any position to say that the "typical" Mexican in California isn't just as hard-working and peace-loving as you seem to think nearly all illegales are; I do know from personal experience that not nearly all of the Mexicans in Texas are that way and I have serious doubts about those in other areas. We need to sort the ones that just want jobs from the ones that consider the American Southwest stolen from Mexico and consider it their duty to take it back. The first step toward doing that is an effective border barrier backed by enough force to guarantee that the only people entering this country from the south do it through proper entry points in reasonable numbers. Only after that happens is there any chance of effectively sorting the good from the bad and deciding which ones we should share a country with.

The above hissed in response by: Bill Faith [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 31, 2006 8:17 PM

The following hissed in response by: Don

"After careful negotiation it is agreed that Mexico will join the U.S, as 20 or so new member states. "

Ah, oops. You have just changed the balance of power. The 20 new states (with 40 Senators) and their congresscritters combine forces with the distributionist congresscritters we already have so the wet dreams of the 60's and 70's all come true at once. Ever wanted to live with the German economy? You just did it, and worse!

The above hissed in response by: Don [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 2, 2006 3:18 PM

The following hissed in response by: Don

I think Daffyd is correct in criticising the Cap here, although poor George Will comes in for more abuse than he deserves.

The goals of the proposed wall aren't anything like those of either the Berlin Wall or the Israeli Wall, so much so that I doubt that using that model will work at all.

Certainly we could be brutal and lay remote control machine guns along the wall. Unfortunately that would blow right back in our face the first time it was used. Thirty people dead! Or whatever. We can't do it because the US is simply not remotely brutal enough. Contrary to opinion in Europe and the Left Coast the US is not the Third Reich reborn. If we were it would be no problem - but we aren't.

This is why Bush and the 'moderates' are correct about immigration reform. We have to build a better dam and also legal ways to let some of the water through lest the dam burst. I don't know that Daffyd's plan of guest workers and citizen aspirants could pass congress right now, but it's a decent starting point.

The above hissed in response by: Don [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 2, 2006 3:28 PM

The following hissed in response by: Don

Keep one thing in mind; Illegal immigrants aren't Palestinian suicide bombers. Some of them may be criminals or welfare moochers but that doesn't justify deadly force.

The welfare moochers are not the fault of Mexico or Mexicans - they are the result of our own choices. No matter that the Federal Judge may be forcing states to pay up - the judges are our own as are the politicians who appoint them. It's a crisis of our democracy and it's up to us to solve it - or not, as we will.

The above hissed in response by: Don [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 2, 2006 3:34 PM

The following hissed in response by: Don

Keep one thing in mind; Illegal immigrants aren't Palestinian suicide bombers. Some of them may be criminals or welfare moochers but that doesn't justify deadly force.

The welfare moochers are not the fault of Mexico or Mexicans - they are the result of our own choices. No matter that the Federal Judge may be forcing states to pay up - the judges are our own as are the politicians who appoint them. It's a crisis of our democracy and it's up to us to solve it - or not, as we will.

The above hissed in response by: Don [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 2, 2006 3:34 PM

The following hissed in response by: Big D

Aye carumba, I am so sadly misunderstood!

Absorb Mexico after 15 years. Not now, later. 15 years of a growing economy. 15 years teaching them to be Americans. When the border comes down it would not be 40 new "Mexican" senators, it would be 40 new American senators. And would they vote together? Who says? Different regions of Mexico are like night and day. I suspect at the end of the day there would be plenty of Republican states.

Most Mexicans are very conservative. They are natural allies of the Republican party. The only thing driving them into the democratic fold is poverty.

Besides, who's to say that the merger would ever really happen? If things are not looking so good, there is no reason to go forward with the plan.

The real problem is bad government on the Mexican side. It prevents their economy from generating suffcient jobs for the people. To go back to the dam analogy, when the dam is leaking and can't be fixed, what are your options? Drain the lake or face catastrophe. Development of the Mexican economy is the only real long term fix I can see to this problem. The Mexican statehood option is the quickest way I can see toward that goal.

The above hissed in response by: Big D [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 3, 2006 10:28 AM

The following hissed in response by: Wizard

They're literally raping the language!
Great, it's gonna take days to get that image out of my head.

The above hissed in response by: Wizard [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 24, 2012 8:42 AM

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