$20M ‘fence’ scrapped for not catching enough illegals
Filed under: Illegal Immigration, United States — Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief on April 24, 2008 @ 2:30 pm CEST
Bad news for anti-illegal immigration folks: ‘The government is scrapping a $20 million prototype of its highly touted “virtual fence” on the Arizona-Mexico border because the system is failing to adequately alert border patrol agents to illegal crossings.’
Less than a week after Chertoff accepted Project 28 on February 22, the Government Accountability Office told Congress that it “did not fully meet user needs, and the project’s design will not be used as the basis for future” developments.
A glaring shortcoming of the project was the time lag between the electronic detection of movement along the border and the transmission of a camera image to agents patrolling the area, the GAO reported.
Although the fence continues to operate, it hasn’t come close to meeting the Border Patrol’s goals, said Kelly Good, deputy director of the Secure Border Initiative program office in Washington…
Agents began using the virtual fence in December, and the towers have resulted in more than 3,000 apprehensions, said Greg Giddens, executive director of the SBI program office in Washington.
But that’s just a fraction of the several hundred illegal immigrants believed to cross the border daily southwest of Tucson.
Why in the world are some conservatives so incredibly dedicated to waste many millions, hundreds of millions potentially even, on a ’solution’ that’s not much of a solution at all? The demands by the anti-illegal immigration folks are difficult to fulfill. Perhaps even impossible. And if you’re going to try to close the border, the government has to spend big bucks.
Having said that, if thousands of people, let alone hundreds of thousands, were migrating illegally to the Netherlands every year, I would demand closing the border down as well. I don’t have anything against illegal aliens as such; these people simply want to improve their lives. Who can blame them? But it’s possible that terrorists will use the same border, and before you know… boom.
1 Anand
April 24, 2008 @ 8:32 pm CESTHi Michael,
You under-estimate the number of illegals that are in the United States. We most probably (according to estimates) have between 12-20 million (or maybe even more) illegals in the US currently. This figure was recently approaching almost the rate of a million a year.
That is the size of the entire population of the Netherlands living illegally in the US. Scary thought! Can you blame them? Don’t also forget that only the poorest section of society with no prospects for jobs in their respective countries will immigrate illegally through trenches, desert, and run past border patrol. One thing here would be certain — most of them are uneducated, many illiterate, and quite a few are criminals (since it really pays to be able to transport illegal substances into the US through a porous border).
I don’t think we need to import mass poverty, crime, or a huge class of people whose labor is only sustainable at wages below minimum wage. The moment they’re legalized, as the lefties are advocating, McCain notwithstanding, many of them will be unsupportable at minimum wage levels and there will be a massive increase in unemployment.
Cheers.
2 Anand
April 24, 2008 @ 8:44 pm CESTOne more thing to add –
Illegal Immigrations overall lead the US taxpayer to spend hundreds of billions annually since they don’t have car insurance (so can’t pay if they collide with anyone — this happened to my friend), don’t pay income taxes, easily escape criminal investigations, and get free healthcare at hospitals without any payments. They also suffer from massive poverty and hence rely on a lot of free public services funded by the US taxpayer. Yes, many leftists like to use some dubious math to conclude that there is a "net gain" of having illegals and they still pay sales taxes but there are often dishonest tactics used in such statistics because they end up including and excluding various other immigrants at will (remember, legal immigrants to the US are often highly educated and successful) to fudge the numbers.
Looking at all this, an ‘experience’ costing millions is hardly a blip on the screen and definitely worth it.
Cheers.
3 Michael van der Galien
April 24, 2008 @ 8:47 pm CESTAnand, thanks for commenting. As for the number; I know. IT’s actually estimated between 12 and 15 million, but that’s indeed a very high number. My ‘thousands’ referred to relatively - considering AMerica’s entire population - approximately hundred thousands people migrating to the US illegally each year, which is 100,000 / 300,000,000 = 0,03% each year, that would be a couple of thousands in the Netherlands each and every year migrating illegally to this country.
If we look at the total amount of illegal immigrants, the % is higher, in both cases; 5% in the US (15 million of 300 million), and that would be the equivalent of 800,000 illegals living in the Netherlands (population; 16 million).
High, very high numbers indeed, but that doesn’t take away my post in itself.
As for low wages: sure, but without those low wages, many businesses would go broke. Those are the facts as well. Your economy needs those people. You want to compete in a constantly globalizing world, don’t you?
Now, personally I believe that it should be easier for people to migrate legally and that the government should stop telling employers what to pay their employees, that would also eradicate the problem, but we all know that’s not going to happen.
4 Michael van der Galien
April 24, 2008 @ 8:49 pm CESTWe are talking about illegal immigrants here, right? How in the world can they "rely on a lot of free public services funded by the US taxpayer"?
I’m truly wondering about that; that’s simply not possible, is it? If you’re illegal in a country, you can’t possibly ask the government of that country to help you out financially. At the moment you do, the government sees you’re there illegal, and you may be deported.
No?
5 Lydia
May 17, 2008 @ 8:52 pm CESTadmin: name-calling and racial bigotry = ban. P.S. putting it in Spanish doesn’t help you hide it.