Whoa whoa...who said the fence is there to stop people? 

The UAVs and the Border Agents stop people.  The fence slows them down enough to let UAVs concentrate their searches and provide time for Agents to arrive.  That's why we're not spending a bunch of money on the fence to make it high-tech.  We just want something that provides a good mental barrier as well as a minor physical one that buys our agents some time to react.

Hey, just pretend they're pulling over people and checking for proof they've purchased health insurance. Surely we can agree that such heinous criminals as the uninsured deserve to be deported!

Obviously the details need to be hammered out, but my point is that we unfortunately will have to accept some form of amnesty once we stop the flood and fix the immigration laws.  We can't just ignore the folks that are here, and reality is that it would be a impossible to try to send them all home (I would if we could). 

How we go about solving that is certainly up for debate but some form of amnesty will be required ...as much as I dislike the idea of rewarding anyone for a crime....

After a period of time, I would agree, but quite often a false choice is presented between amnesty and rounding up everyone and sending them home overnight. I think attrition through actual, serious enforcement would be incredibly effective.

Yeah that's a fair point, I think there is definitely a bit of an all or nothing prospect pushed out there despite there being plenty of in-between.

But there still should be some form of amnesty at play.  While I despise their illegal entry into the country there are fantastic people who contribute greatly to the country while here...in a lot of cases more than most citizens.  Those people I have really no problem with amnesty that leads to citizenship, on the other end are felons..I think most would agree we don't want to import criminals so I'd say send them back home.  Everyone in between those two extremes is where it gets to be a gray area..and I honestly don't have the answer for how to handle it.

I just know that that step is AFTER securing the border and untangling the bureaucratic morass called immigration that we currently have.

But most critically enforcement is where things really need to change.  No matter what we do or how we do it, if we conclude the process by going back to a non-enforcement policy like we have now, the whole thing just starts over.

We have a river, although in some places it's not very wide, I think in all places it slows people down.

If I could get from A to B in 2 minutes, if you put a fence in the way, I can get there in 2 minutes and 10 seconds. It's not going to do anything.

By the way, I am not just saying this hypothetically, I know this to be true. When I worked for the military in New Mexico, we did work for the border patrol. We evaluated ways to prevent people from crossing the border.

Why I can't talk to much about what we did, or how effective it was, I can say a fence is pointless. A UAV however, is a good idea.. if you can afford to operate them, or plan to do anything about the data you collect.

The other thing we have to change is policy. When we do catch someone, we just drive them back over and release them. Some people have been caught 2-3 times in the same day.

We need to just remove the desire to come over here... aside from killing people, there is no other way to keep very determined people out. Hell, thousand die each year trying to get here from the desert, and they still come.

Except that it doesn't involve police officers picking people up off the street based on the color of their skin...

Neither does this! Oh, snap!

If you're going to complain about a law, it helps to be aware of what it actually says and does. I guess "the other side = Nazis" isn't just for teabaggers anymore... not that it ever was.

I have to disagree with this badgenome, to a certain extent. The law doesn't say "Pull over dark skinned people and harass them" but you can bet your ass that will happen even more than it does now. I'm a white dude who dresses professionally and obeys laws almost too much (hell, I don't even jaywalk!) so everything is just hunky-dory for me, but the police already use ethnic profiling, I have a black friend who dresses and acts much the same as me and getting pulled over is a regular thing for him, he didn't even realize it wasn't normal for everyone until I remarked on it. This law gives the police unmitigated authority to do WHATEVER THEY WANT FOR ANY REASON AT ALL, I know that's not the intent, but it will be the effect. And since the people are here illegally, they have no recourse if they are harrassed or even beaten. If we want to stop immigration by threat of imminent violence, this is a great way to go.

No, it does not. If you are going to make that claim, back it up.

False. Look at what happened to Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean. They shot a Mexican drug dealer in the ass because they thought he had a gun, and the government granted him immunity so that he could testify against them! If they will do that for a drug dealer, they will certainly do it for a humble day laborer... unless the system is even more perverse than I think it is.