Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
North Carolina Yankee
Moderators
Atlas Institution
Posts: 54,118
|
 |
« Reply #25 on: June 30, 2013, 02:19:25 PM » |
|
Theoretically you could build the fence as presently authorized and appropriated from back in 2006 (700+ miles which will never happen as along as we have the present DHS Secretary) and then deploy the "virtual fence" technology to cover the rest that isn't already blocked by nature. However, you are still going to have a significant flow as along as the demand for cheap labor is present and the desire on the part of those who attempt it is present. THe economy squenched that off for a few years and probably made the border look more secure then it really is (that is why I am going off statements made in 2006 and 2007 on this matter). But even with that artificial reduction, the paradigm is still as a I said before. At a certain point the returns begin to diminish drastically from each successive dollar your spend on the border and you will still have a steady flow. I beleive this was the head of the border patrol who stated this would be the case back then.
As mocked and ridiculed as Mitt Romney was for talking about magnets (he should have said incentives) and self-deportation (he should have just dodged the question really and thus allowed some flexibility to offer up some kind of "compassionate alternative" to self-deportation induced as an effect of having real enforcement, sometime in the spring of 2012. He tried to do that in December 2007 on Meet the Press, but he fumbled the ball in typical Romney fashion), he showed far greater understanding of this issue then most of the Senators on either side of the debate, even if the specific ideas and solutions weren't well rounded or weren't properly advocated for. The recession itself proved the effect of denying access to jobs on the flow of illegal labor and thus validated the fucntional aspect of his approach at the very least. Mandatory E-Verify would have the same effect, but only if you actually go after those who fail to check or check and knowingly hire them anyway. Considering the track record of those in such enforcement capacities, and the lack of any accountability in the bill to ensure that it happens, there isn't much to say of it's presence in this bill.
|
