Anyone who thinks the border fence will work needs to visit this site...

[jmowreader]

or better, fly to Berlin and visit the museum.

http://www.mauermuseum.de/english/frame-index-mauer.html

The "Haus am Checkpoint Charlie" tells the story of the Berlin Wall, the most fortified border in the history of the world.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall, about five thousand people escaped to West Berlin through this wall. The East Germans had these things going for them: a small isolated area to defend (about 110 miles), shoot-to-kill orders, dogs trained to kill, landmines, spikes in the river running through part of the East-West Berlin border, and every other brutal, inhuman thing you can possibly devise to keep someone in. They had the best border troops stationed in Berlin, and those East German soldiers were supported by the Soviet 20th Guards Army. PLUS, they were trying to keep Germans, a very well-disciplined people, out of West Berlin. What were these people seeking? Freedom, reunification with relatives who live in West Berlin, and access to quality consumer goods; the DDR for all its faults kept its people fed and employed...and a lot of East Germans LIKED being Communists. Given ALL THOSE ADVANTAGES, five thousand people escaped in 38 years--on average, a little over one escapee every three days for the life of the Wall.

The United States has a different situation: the Mexican land border is 2000 miles long and there's open ocean at both ends. We can't spike the Rio Grande. We can't install landmines. We can't go around shooting border crossers or letting dogs eat them. And we're trying to keep Mexicans out--hungry ones with no jobs and no future in Mexico, who know they can run up here and get an under-the-table job that pays far better than anything they can get in Mexico.

If the East Germans had all these advantages in keeping people in, and they STILL lost one every three days, how in HELL are we going to keep Mexicans out?

[tavalon]

1. Silly wabbit, the fence isn't for keeping illegal aliens out,

it's for keeping our stupid ass politicians in!

Really, it's just a political football, meant to scarf up money, not really meant to do anything else and anyone with half a brain or even less but who happens to live anywhere within Texas, Arizona or Southern California knows it isn't meant as anything but political fodder.

To pretend that the fence is legitimate is to look, well, foolish. Let's just leave that to the professionals, shall we?

[jmowreader]

4. I know it's not legitimate...

but I get to help provide the $40 brazillion it's going to take to build, staff and maintain this eyesore. So fuck it, I'm complaining. Fat lot of good it will do, but I'm doing it anyway.

Let me see...we sent Brain-Dead Ronnie to Berlin to tell Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. We are trying to get the Israelis to stop building their "Good Fence." And then we build one of our own! Of couese! How logical!

[RC]

2. But..., but..., but... They're stealing jobs from hard working Americans.

And..., and..., and that's why the employment rate here is so high. Yeah, that's it. That's why. That's why we gotta keep them out.
:::idiot smiling like he had a rational thought:::


I sure will be glad when we get the children in prison and this country pointed back in a sane direction again.

[tavalon]

3. By children, I assume you mean Bush and Cheney?

[RC]

5. Yep. Remember they were suppose to be the 'Adults' in charge.

[treestar]

6. It would be so much easier to give them visas

We'd have some idea of who was here. They might overstay them, but at least their entry would be documented. Now they have an exit system, so they would know who overstayed.

As it is, we prefer not to know who sneaks over, apparently in the name of "security."

That's what gets me when people wail "We can't have open borders!" We DO have open borders. If we were the size of Liechtenstein we might be able to enforce the restrictions we have in place. If we had not been a country entirely created by immigration, we might hope to be a place no one else wants to come to and therefore able to enforce our restrictions. If we were a police state, we could know who wasn't supposed to be here and enforce our restrictions. But we are not any of these things.