To all those who said a virtual fence is the answer …

[SOdhner]

Two fences in the same sector, one properly done (double layered, no breaks, etc) and one improperly done (we'll call it Obama/democrat fencing) shows that crossings plummet at the properly designed fence and hardly decrease at the Obama fencing.

I can't view the video right now - do they take into account the fact that since the "good" wall is only in one area people can (and presumably would) just go around to another area? THat seems like a difficult problem to work around in this kind of study. Certainly when the "good" wall is the only option that would change the approach.

I do know (second-hand from a fairly reliable source) that there are a lot of holes in areas where there are walls. Some of these are tunnels, some just holes. They spring up pretty quickly.

I'm not saying that a wall is a bad idea, but they'll still come through if they feel like it. We'll stop some people, but not the ones we're most concerned about. The ones we stop will be the indivisuals trying to cross on their own, and those are also the ones that (in my personal experience) tend to work hard to contribute once here and would make great citizens if given the chance.

Smuggling of drugs or people wouldn't change much, from what I've seen.

I don't like the "virtual" fence better, though I won't rule out all forms of a virtual fence. This particular attempt seems to be a disaster. I think the problem with most border efforts is that we do not have the manpower to properly patrol that much real estate. In that sense some level of electronic surveilance may be better than physical fences since that helps us to properly distribute our security.

But really, I just don't ever think we'll have true border security.

 

[BeAChooser]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/02/immigration-costs-fair-amnesty-educations-costs-reform/

The cost of harboring illegal immigrants in the United States is a staggering $113 billion a year -- an average of $1,117 for every “native-headed” household in America -- according to a study conducted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

Wow. At that cost, surely we could build a proper fence/wall from coast to coast and still save billions and billions each year. So why don't we?

 

[kevinquinnyo]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/02/immigration-costs-fair-amnesty-educations-costs-reform/



Wow. At that cost, surely we could build a proper fence/wall from coast to coast and still save billions and billions each year. So why don't we?

Maybe because immigrants are actually good for the economy.

Would you agree, or do I need to pick apart this stupid argument in detail?

 

[BeAChooser]

Maybe because immigrants are actually good for the economy.

Well do you have sources that prove that ... like the study I just referenced which concludes illegal (why is it you folks ALWAYS forget that term? ) immigrants cost the nation $113 billion a year? And keep in mind, that's just the direct costs. Things like the cost of educating the children of illegals. The medicaid and other medical aid they receive for free. The cost of incarcerating them when they commit crimes or get detained. The cost of providing them with lawyers. The public assistance (free meals, etc) they get.

And that number assumes only 13 million illegals when some estimates put that number closer to 20 million (http://ohmygov.com/blogs/general_ne...rants-in-u-s-may-be-closer-to-20-million.aspx ). In which case the direct costs to the country would be $173 billion a year.

That doesn't include the indirect and opportunity costs to the country. For example,

- From the overcrowding of transportation systems that has resulted (in certain states/cities costing billions).

- The cost to society from the thousands of murders they commit each year (what's the life of an American citizen worth now days?).

- Their connection with drug cartels, gangs and drug smuggling (would our drug and crime problem be anywhere near as serious if illegals weren't so involved in it?).

- The cost of the rapes they commit (some estimates put the number of sex offenses caused by this group in the hundreds of thousands each year).

- The cost of the traffic accidents they cause (see http://www.usillegalaliens.com/impacts_of_illegal_immigration_traffic_accidents.html ).

- The disruption they cause to what was once a primarily english speaking culture in terms of its cohesion and values.

- The detrimental impact that non-english speaking students are having on the education system and the progress of other students' learning.

- The money they take out of our economy and send back home (some estimates put that at over $45 billion a year in 2006 alone).

And don't forget the long term costs of caring for them in the future when it turns out they have neither the language or other skills necessary to succeed at more than menial jobs in the US. And when we give them amnesty on top of that. As is, we are just beginning to understand how big and unsustainable those costs will be for our own citizens. Imagine also having to take care of millions of what were illegals (thanks to amnesty … and don't think the one democrats now want would be the last) who decide to not learn much english during their lifetimes, because we allow them not to learn, and who as a result basically remain unskilled their entire lives without much in the way of savings. Here's an article on a study done by the Heritage Foundation that concluded each illegal would result in a $100,000 net annual cost to taxpayers: http://www.10news.com/news/9620142/detail.html . As they put it, the US has effectively imported "10 million high school dropouts". And that will mean the future cost of illegals will reach half a trillion dollars a year. That dwarfs any possible positive effect illegals might have on our economy.

 

[GreNME]

- The disruption they cause to what was once a primarily english speaking culture in terms of its cohesion and values.

This is comedy gold.

 

[BeAChooser]

This is comedy gold.

I fully realize that some around here don't care one iota about the culture and values that made this country great.

 

[CORed]

I would ask posters to stick to the topic of the thread ... that of the virtual fence versus a real fence. In my opinion, the virtual fence solution was offered by those just trying to keep something effective, like a real fence, from being built. Many of them weren't really serious about it working. And now that it's clear, in any case, that one can't be affordably built, are there any other solutions you wish to offer in lieu of a real fence? Or can we all finally agree to try building a real fence?

In my opinion, the whole stupid idea that a fence will do any good at all is being offered by those who want to keep something effective, like really cracking down on people who employ illegal aliens from being done. A fence without people -- a whole lot of people -- to guard it is worthless, and will last about as long as the Berlin Wall did after the East Germans and Russians quit guarding it Even if we fence the whole border and hire tens of thousands of border guards, they will come in boats. So we fence the coastline, and they come in through Canada, then we fence the Canadian border, and they come it planes, so we build a roof over the whole country ...

 

[Juniversal]

I fully realize that some around here don't care one iota about the culture and values that made this country great.

Ah, yes. Slavery, racism, segregation and the withholding of womans rights. The good ole days.

 

[CORed]

I fully realize that some around here don't care one iota about the culture and values that made this country great.

Racism and xenophobia?

 

[marplots]

Doesn't the 'cost' argument ring hollow? I'm guessing it has less to do with illegal aliens than it has to so with what is perceived as 'slackers' and 'gold-brickers'.

How can they simultaneously be stealing jobs and on the dole? And what happens to the public funds anyhow? Don't these people pay rent, buy food and transportation, shop at Wal-Mart and pay sales taxes?

My guess is that one single oligarch who decides to move his manufacturing facility offshore is doing more economic harm than ten busloads of illegals. At least that part could be changed, the 'illegal' moniker. Let's change some laws already and quit making families into criminals.

 

[kevinquinnyo]

Well do you have sources that prove that ... like the study I just referenced which concludes illegal (why is it you folks ALWAYS forget that term? ) immigrants cost the nation $113 billion a year? And keep in mind, that's just the direct costs. Things like the cost of educating the children of illegals. The medicaid and other medical aid they receive for free. The cost of incarcerating them when they commit crimes or get detained. The cost of providing them with lawyers. The public assistance (free meals, etc) they get.

Your solution is to build a fence. Why not legalize them?

Of course, that's a link from a progressive think tank, so if you are in the habit of ignoring those types of sources, how about the earlier Cato study that came to almost identical conclusions?

Cato, Restriction or Legalization? Measuring the Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform, Dixon, Rimmer

The positive impact for U.S. households of legalization under an optimal visa tax would be 1.27 percent of GDP or $180 billion.

And that's based off earlier population estimates that, like you said, debatably much higher. (The more the better.)

 

[kevinquinnyo]

[...]

That doesn't include the indirect and opportunity costs to the country. For example,

- From the overcrowding of transportation systems that has resulted (in certain states/cities costing billions).

show me how you figure this

- The cost to society from the thousands of murders they commit each year (what's the life of an American citizen worth now days?).

Between 7 - 8 million dollars per person, IIRC based on the Statistical Value of Life calculations. So if we take your "thousands" at face value, then that's between 7 billion and 16 billion dollars. How much wealth is created by illegal immigrant labor? And how many murders are committed each year by legals? Are we taking this into account, or just picking and choosing the statistics we like?

- Their connection with drug cartels, gangs and drug smuggling (would our drug and crime problem be anywhere near as serious if illegals weren't so involved in it?).

But wait, homicide rates have clearly gone down since about 1993, and in fact, violent crime and property crime have gone down since the early 90s, while illegal immigration has clearly been accelerating starting about 1993.

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that

[....]
per year from 1990–94, and further increasing to 750,000 per year from 1995–1999,

[...]
as of March 2005, the undocumented population had reached 11 million or more including more than 6.5 million illegal Mexicans (~60% of all illegal immigrants).
[...]

By September 2006 the illegal population is thought to be about 13 million.

We can all play with numbers, it's fun!

- The cost of the rapes they commit (some estimates put the number of sex offenses caused by this group in the hundreds of thousands each year).

See above, and let's see some statistics.

- The cost of the traffic accidents they cause (see http://www.usillegalaliens.com/impacts_of_illegal_immigration_traffic_accidents.html ).

Legalize them!

- The disruption they cause to what was once a primarily english speaking culture in terms of its cohesion and values.

Yeah I don't care about that. What's the cost? Give me the figure that shows the cost of companies printing bilingual signs, instruction manuals, etc, and then we'll just deduct that from the increased revenue they get from the now higher population buying their products. Hint: those companies have already done that research, which is why they do what they do.

cohesion and values...

You should argue also that the introduction of other operating systems and coding languages disrupted the technology culture in what was once primarily BASIC and MS-DOS.

- The detrimental impact that non-english speaking students are having on the education system and the progress of other students' learning.

I don't know, that could be a legitimate issue. But I imagine it's at the bottom of your list because it was at the bottom of the barrel.

- The money they take out of our economy and send back home (some estimates put that at over $45 billion a year in 2006 alone).

Well, legalize them. Then they are free to do whatever they want with their money. They do earn their income after all.

And don't forget the long term costs of caring for them in the future when it turns out they have neither the language or other skills necessary to succeed at more than menial jobs in the US. And when we give them amnesty on top of that. As is, we are just beginning to understand how big and unsustainable those costs will be for our own citizens. Imagine also having to take care of millions of what were illegals (thanks to amnesty … and don't think the one democrats now want would be the last) who decide to not learn much english during their lifetimes, because we allow them not to learn, and who as a result basically remain unskilled their entire lives without much in the way of savings. Here's an article on a study done by the Heritage Foundation that concluded each illegal would result in a $100,000 net annual cost to taxpayers: http://www.10news.com/news/9620142/detail.html . As they put it, the US has effectively imported "10 million high school dropouts". And that will mean the future cost of illegals will reach half a trillion dollars a year. That dwarfs any possible positive effect illegals might have on our economy.

Let me ask you this. Would you or any fellow Americans oppose caring for them if they were unskilled and helpless and elderly in Mexico? Personally I mean? Would you help them?

I don't care one way or the other. I'm just wondering if you're talking about mandatory welfare measures that we would pay for through taxes, or do you mean private charity?

 

[BeAChooser]

Ah, yes. Slavery, racism, segregation and the withholding of womans rights. The good ole days.

Racism and xenophobia?

Of course, that's not at all what I was talking about, but you go ahead and continue creating your red herrings and strawmen as your sole arguments, rather than actually face the issue of illegal immigration and what it is doing to this country. Because I think you only help my side of this debate.

And by the way, the only racists I see around here are the ones currently running the DOJ, Whitehouse and the DNC. The only people I see trying to keep people enslaved are those running the democrat party, who are now so desperate that they may lose two, or perhaps even three, of their major voting blocks that they are lying to them almost continually. And they think race baiting and accusations of race can be used to intimidate the rest of us. Well the times they are indeed a changing and I think the majority of ordinary Americans are about to prove it come November.

 

[Juniversal]

My statement had no pertinence to this immigration debate. Only your yearning for the good ole days of yore.

 

[BeAChooser]

Your solution is to build a fence. Why not legalize them?

Why not do both? The cost of the fence/wall from coast to coast would be a fraction of the numbers both of us are talking about in terms of benefits and costs. And a fence can have gates, so nothing prevents allowing Mexicans (or others) into the country ON A WORK VISA (which is what the CATO study at least means by "legalize"). But at least then you get the opportunity to make sure that person doesn't have a known criminal record, isn't involved in gangs or drugs, isn't pregnant and trying to create an anchor baby, isn't bringing a bevy of kids, isn't smuggling, and you have at least some documentation that he/she has arrived, what he/she looks like and where he/she is going. What we have now is totally uncontrolled. Furthermore, under a work visa program, we could dispense with these continued calls by the democrat party that we make them all citizens. And, should they violate our laws or otherwise cause trouble and we catch them, we'd have a chance of deporting them and then not having them run right back across the border as they now do over and over.

 

[kevinquinnyo]

Why not do both? The cost of the fence/wall from coast to coast would be a fraction of the numbers both of us are talking about in terms of benefits and costs. And a fence can have gates, so nothing prevents allowing Mexicans (or others) into the country ON A WORK VISA (which is what the CATO study at least means by "legalize"). But at least then you get the opportunity to make sure that person doesn't have a known criminal record, isn't involved in gangs or drugs, isn't pregnant and trying to create an anchor baby, isn't bringing a bevy of kids, isn't smuggling, and you have at least some documentation that he/she has arrived, what he/she looks like and where he/she is going. What we have now is totally uncontrolled. Furthermore, under a work visa program, we could dispense with these continued calls by the democrat party that we make them all citizens. And, should they violate our laws or otherwise cause trouble and we catch them, we'd have a chance of deporting them and then not having them run right back across the border as they now do over and over.

If you make crossing the border completely easy, safe, and efficient, by allowing them to come over legally, then why do we need to build the fence?

Who would jump the fence when the gate is wide open?

If you're against murderers, junkies, pregnant opportunists, and the like, then why aren't you arguing that we deport the perfectly legal, naturally born, or legally immigrated United States citizens who are exactly that?

 

[kevinquinnyo]

Another way of saying this:

If the gate was wide open, and any and all Mexicans or people from other countries were allowed to enter, why do you seem to think we would get a disproportionate amount of criminals?

I know you don't think Mexicans are inherently more criminal in nature than Americans, right?

So wouldn't the ratio of criminal/deadbeat be the same coming in from Mexico as what's here in the U.S.?

 

[Corsair 115]

So we fence the coastline, and they come in through Canada, then we fence the Canadian border, and they come it planes, so we build a roof over the whole country ...

Perhaps it's my sarcasm detector on the fritz, but how exactly would illegal immigrants get from Mexico to Canada to then cross into the United States? It's going to require either an airplane or ship ticket, and the consequent expense, passport, and visa, in order to get to Canada from Mexico.

 

[CORed]

Why not do both? The cost of the fence/wall from coast to coast would be a fraction of the numbers both of us are talking about in terms of benefits and costs. And a fence can have gates, so nothing prevents allowing Mexicans (or others) into the country ON A WORK VISA (which is what the CATO study at least means by "legalize"). But at least then you get the opportunity to make sure that person doesn't have a known criminal record, isn't involved in gangs or drugs, isn't pregnant and trying to create an anchor baby, isn't bringing a bevy of kids, isn't smuggling, and you have at least some documentation that he/she has arrived, what he/she looks like and where he/she is going. What we have now is totally uncontrolled. Furthermore, under a work visa program, we could dispense with these continued calls by the democrat party that we make them all citizens. And, should they violate our laws or otherwise cause trouble and we catch them, we'd have a chance of deporting them and then not having them run right back across the border as they now do over and over.

For a change, you are making some sense here. But why are you so dead set against allowing Mexican immigrants to become citizens, if they want to? Wouldn't that give them more incentive to assimilate into our society? I'm not suggesting that citizenship be automatic, but if a legal immigrant on a work visa is productive and law-abiding, why shouldn't they have the opportunity to apply for citizenship? Besides, do you really think you can prevent people who come here to work them from having "anchor babies"?

 

[CORed]

Perhaps it's my sarcasm detector on the fritz, but how exactly would illegal immigrants get from Mexico to Canada to then cross into the United States? It's going to require either an airplane or ship ticket, and the consequent expense, passport, and visa, in order to get to Canada from Mexico.

Well, I'm being a little bit sarcastic, but it's my understanding that a significant portion of illegal immigrants in this country already come in legally and overstay their visas. They don't all come from Mexico, even though Mexicans are the largest group and the group that certain people seem to get the most upset about. I just think that "securing the borders" is probably one of the least effective ways to limit immigration, if limiting immigration is even a desirable thing to do.