US cannot fence off the challenge of immigration

[Thom Little]

If Republican leaders in Congress have their way, the new year will see a 700-mile security fence, topped with wire, lights and cameras and patrolled by police and troops, begin to push its way along the Mexican border.

Mexican officials have called it the “Berlin Wall”; others have compared it with the security barrier that Israel is building on the West Bank.

Many say that, whatever you call it, the fence is no answer at all to the question of what the United States should do about immigration, with 20 years of failed “crackdowns” behind it.

That unanswered question has begun to dominate US politics, to an extent easy for other countries to overlook. It crops up in schools, pensions, healthcare, big questions of national identity, and, again and again, in the need for money. The US population is expected to increase at a rate that European countries would find unimaginable. In 1990 it was 249 million; now it is 298 million; by 2050 it is expected (by the US and the United Nations) to be 420 million. That astounding jump — of 70 per cent, or 170 million, in only 60 years — will surely affect how the US handles itself in the world.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1966371,00.html

[sweetheart]

1. As the population grows

That fence won't be to keep people out.

[Burning Water]

2. Why do people

want to come here anyway? Lousy economy, dictator in charge, rights diminishing. Didn't they get the memo? I'd be heading to Canada myself if I didn't have to stay to care for my sick mother.