July 6, 2013

Anyone besides me tired of the obfuscation and bloviating emanating from Washington over border security?

Which border needs to be secured, anyway?  I haven’t heard of even one Mexican trying to blow up our buildings, airplanes or parades. Those bad people enter through JFK or BOS airports. How about some sensible profiling at those ports of entry?  (Is that a turban? Sorry, Mohammed, no can enter.)

The U.S. Mexican border is 1,970 miles long. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Agency estimates the cost of a fence to be $21 million per mile. That computes to $41.3 Billion to build a fence, likely using Mexican labor with tunnels and stiles for ease of crossing, locations marked only in Spanish.

Assuming a single individual could cover 5’ on either side of his/her body, it would take only 1,040,000 people spread out arm-to-arm to effectively block the border. Unemployment rates would plunge, the border would be safe and sales of water bags would soar. And— we’d save $41 billion to build a fence around Jamaica, NY. (For those of you west of the Hudson, that’s JFK)

Seriously, the only sane way to address this issue is to normalize trade and employment policies with Mexico and allow both countries to benefit from the economic opportunities on both sides. (Mexico enjoys the second largest quantity of proven oil reserves in the world. And, they now maintain nearly all airframes and engines for U.S. airlines.) It’s time to stop the ridiculous gaming of phony solutions for dystopian symptoms, and address the real problem.

Are you listening, Mssrs. Rubio and Reid?