TheRealMafoo said:
Sqrl said:
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.
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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.
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1) The river is a joke in many places. There are tons of places where you can literally just walk across.
2) You're way underselling how much a fence slows people down. Particularly when you start talking about groups of people. I fully admit it's not going to buy much more than a few minutes but that is plenty of time for what it needs to do. Especially with two of them to get past.
3) Oh I understand where you're coming from, I don't think you understand what I'm saying though. You're way too focused on the most dedicated people. Nobody thinks you can 100% stop people who are willing to die to enter illegally. But that doesn't mean you don't do anything for other cases, and it certainly means you simply don't try at all.
In this case the fence exists as a stop-gap measure, it's not intended to be, nor is it expected to be, something that actually stops people. After a few year's the point of the fence shifts from being a physical barrier to almost exclusively being a mental one.
4) I fully agree policies need to change, so no argument there.
5) Yes, we do need to remove the desire..preferably without making the US look awful in comparison =P In seriousness though, while we do need to remove the desire, that is not a reason to not also do others things...like building a fence. We need to do a lot of things because it's going to take a combination of factors to reduce the appeal of illegal immigration.
