> Joe, walls stop all kinds of things from happening. For examples of this ask Hadrian, the Chinese, any Middle Ages Lord or any government entity. If walls did not work they would not have kept building them for 5 thousand years.
The Chinese wall refers to several walls that failed, though they tried and tried to perfect it so it would not. The failure at the walls strongest time did not stop the invasion of the Mongols who conquered the whole country and set up the Yuan Dynasty in 1270.
But sure, walls stop all sorts of things. Like trade. I grew up in Indiana a stone’s throw from I-69, and various states are colaborating to extend that highway all the way down the the tip of Texas. They are spending zillions of dollars to shave off 20 minutes of the trip to/from the midwest.
But oh, you say “No problem, ‘seal the border’ but trade will cross as always”. This assumes a neutron bomb type of security where all illegals and illegal traffic are magically distinguishable. But in reality, the just make it much slower for the 95% of legal traffic to try to get the 5% illegal that is trying to slip through declared points of entry. That’s right. Surprise! Illegal traffic flows over legal pints of entry. Traffic slows to a certain point, and companies leave for elsewhere to do business. China generally. I’ve worked on the border with import/export facilities and I can tell you that the 80′s and 90′s were spent building just-in-time inventories.
But you know what is the kicker, Kender? Even if your perfect security scenario worked, did you know that 50% of illegals cross legally? I’ll bet you didn’t. So you’ll make everyone wait longer to go over the border, and businesses will relocate overseas. And to top it off, you finally discover the obvious truth that most illegals arrive here legally. So why don’t you go master plan someone else’s universe that you understand. Deal?
Oh, and by the way, to build a fence in TX (half of the border is in TX), unlike Arizona and CA generally, the government has to claim a lot of private property to build the fence. Emmanent domain. You’re opposed to that right? Well you aren’t anymore, because the feds are suing ranches, families, and small business out the ying-yang to grab that land for a fence that Texans think is a joke for all the reasons I mentioned.
So you want to screw much of TX business (typical Angelino), kill NAFTA (typical Paleo), screw TX private land owners, and then …. When you discover that half of illegals cross legally, then you’ll want an additional army (not including the one you hired to patrol the new fence) to track down visa violations. That’s a big plan you got there. Better get more friends in Congress than you got. Because the Paleos don’t tend to win elections, and the Secure Fence Act was a rider on the Iraq War emergency spending bill, and it wasn’t debated at all so our legislators are getting a little worried.
> As for giving mexico military hardware, here’s another difference between them and columbia. …. there is nothing to stop [Mexicans] from sliding over our border (as they do right now) and using it to aid the drug dealers.
Nothing to stop them? Not even common sense and self-preservation? You’re question begging; assuming the truth of your argument. They can’t fight corruption because they’re corrupt? …. and the Iraqis just don’t want freedom do they? They are incorrigible. It’s a silly argument. They turned back a leftist in the last election and elected a man who promised a get tough policy with corruption and narcos. And you say it all means nothing. Again, Iraq is to the libs and Mexico is to the Paleos. Iraq will always be a quagmire to the libs, and Mexico will always be a quagmire to the Paleos. Mexico can advance rapidly to 12th in GDP in the world (as they have), but it doesn’t matter to them. Mexico is far better positioned to win against the narcos than Colombia ever was, and Colombia is winning.
< Mexicans expect corruption. They expect to pay bribes. In fact, in 2007 they paid 2.5 billion in bribes.
Mexicans love corruption as much as we loved it during Al Capone’s heyday and decades thereafter in our large cities. “They are corrupt so they can’t fight corruption” blah blah blah circular arguments. People that suffer corruption love it? That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. It hurts everyone, and they know it. They have a 1.4 trillion dollar economy so your figure isn’t shocking as you’d like to think. And if you think the U.S has little bribery, how do you think Marijuana got to be our largest cash crop? Wanna guess how much bribery there is in the U.S.? Hint: it’s more than 2.5 billion, though small as a percent.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=2735017
