If they’re serious about opoids they should stop the war on drugs and start the armistice of treating drug users as the people they are.
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Of course, but with American policy makers this is not going to happen before the heat death of the universe.
this wall will be effective at stopping animal migration, they don’t have power tools. 
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I think it goes without saying that any border defense strategy that depends on migrants not being able to hitch a ride to the border probably has some serious flaws.
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It’s really sad.
Here in Seattle a few years back there was a thing where they made narcan generally available for a few months. All of a sudden people stopped dying to OD. But for some reason safe injection sites and actual funding for narcan distribution just isn’t on the table after seeing the big reductions in fatalities.
It’s like people think drug users deserve to die like dogs in the street. They don’t care how much better the world could be made for themselves at practically no cost, as long as they know “immoral people” are getting hurt they’ll happily pay for it.
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That’s really the crowning idiocy of it. Most undocumented immigrants arrive through standard ports of entry, especially airports as well. They come in on student and travel visas and just stay.
There just aren’t a ton of people attempting to cross the border this way anymore. These ideas about border security are insanely outdated.
And if you look at Mexico. Very few Mexicans are entering the US illegally these days. And a lot of undocumented Mexican Nationals are going back. Simply because Mexico is more stable and it’s ecconomy is doing much better than it used to. Impoverished Mexicans don’t need to head to the US anymore. They can just head to a better part of Mexico.
So if you really want to reduce illegal immigration, the pathway is clear. Focus on stablizing and developing Latin America. But Trump’s deeply antagonistic to any and all practical way to do that.
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Well I am sure that is considered, considering a fair number are driven through the check points.
My point is that depending where you cross, it isn’t easy. Let’s not trivialize the efforts required for the average person, which usually won’t include curbside service nor a generator to power tools.
Of course the actual criminals have smuggling networks and even tunnels. And if anyone is going to off road to and over the border with a generator in the back, it would be the well supplied cartels.
It’s a lot easier to hide than drugs or guns. Put it in a construction bucket in plastic bags with a little quikcrete on top. Just more explainable construction stuff. (Note to self: check for surprising reactions between thermite and quikcrete first.)
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Nah I’ll just tuck it under my bucket of liquid oxygen.
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First, I’m new here: I signed up after reading about the cease/desist letter about the scooters sent to the blogger on Flipboard, and after nosing around on various threads, this place seems to have far more reasonable people than most boards… with that said:
I’ve worked for a long time in industries with a heavy illegal alien presence. When growing up, my family owned a ranch in north-central Mexico, and I was been married to an attorney from Mexico City for several years. I am fluent in Spanish, and have made a LOT of acquaintances over the years of people who are definitely here illegally.
Except for a very few college educated people and their families, the vast majority of people whom I have met who are here illegally most definitely did not enter through a conventional border crossing. Most of the people I knew/know in the restaurant and construction industries go home every 5-8 years. All of these people leave through a border crossing, but pay coyotes to return. I’ve heard just about every possible horror story from them. Several over the years have simply disappeared, and their families still don’t know what happened to them.
The vast majority of people here illegally from Latin America don’t even have passports- no matter what the official number may say. Every single person I’ve met in this situation has fake ID and uses it to work, but would never risk trying to cross through an immigration checkpoint using it.
While I love many of these people like family, I am a strong border advocate.
While some of what Trump says is, obviously, hyperbole and exaggeration, the reality is that we most certainly DO have would-be terrorists coming in through open borders.
From the House Homeland Security Committee: http://opencda.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/396705631-SIA-Report-2018.pdf?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=corruption+chronicles&utm_term=members&utm_content=20190112143445
We likewise have drugs such as Fentanyl (sp?), and Heroin, which are killing more people than firearms.
While no barrier is perfect, the goal isn’t 100% cessation of illegal crossing attempts: It’s to simply slow them down long enough for sensors to alert ICE so they can intercept before they get too far and escape. If all we have is a 4 or 5 strand barbed wire fence, as we currently do in many parts of the border, it’s virtually impossible for ICE to get there in time to intercept even a large % of crossers.
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Gosh: Just read my post above… my apologies for autocorrect-induced grammar and syntax problems.
Didn’t the east india company do something similar?
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So, what’s wrong with more points?
“Banana stand?”
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I like how the method of compromise has evolved. The original report mentions that all designs were breached by the troops ordered to do so. The exact methods used is redacted in the report that I read. Some articles on the subject imply that a sawzall might have been used, The images look to me like they employed a plasma cutter.
But the article here jumps right to “easily defeated by hacksaws”
But any barrier is designed to deter or delay intruders. Ladders or tunnels or plasma cutters will get you through, given enough time. A wall or fence serves as a force multiplier. With a barrier in place, fewer CBP officers can keep better control of larger areas of the border.
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You realize ICE doesn’t patrol the border, right?
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I’ve never heard it suggested there would be “sensors” in a fence, but even assuming that was implemented, exactly how fast are you going to get a response over thousands of miles of border largely with out roads? I could see this working in certain high traffic areas, but most other places not so much.
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Most drugs don’t cross randomly in the desert but through the various ports already. Or they are smuggled in literally underground. Maybe some of the smaller groups do small runs, but the cartels have massive infrastructure including submarines, tunnels, and vehicles with smuggling holds. A wall would do nothing to curb the drug trade.
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The terrorism argument is a non-issue. Yes they have found people and detained them who were on the Terror Screening Database. That that doesn’t mean they are actual terrorists. 41 were stopped at the southern border in 2018, 35 of them were US citizens or legal residents. 6 were not. Conversely, they stopped 91 at the northern border, with 41 not being US citizens or legal residents. And yet we have had no actual terror attacks. I am more worried about domestic terrorism than outside terrorism. We shouldn’t make policy on unlikely hypothetical.
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There needs to be SOME border security and the current ports of intake and border patrol seems to be largely doing the job. The security concerns aren’t high enough to warrant a huge fence or wall.
Let me break it down like this - how is your home security? If you are like most people, it most likely could be defeated with a brick or a good back kick to the door. At the minimum you would want barred windows with a reinforced door. But if you really cared about security, you would have your house out of brick or cement, combined with a thick metal doors, with the steel shuttered windows.
What’s that? You don’t live in a bad enough neighborhood to require that level of security? Exactly.
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Ah…So they did. I didn’t know about this. Good read:
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/britain-built-wall-great-hedge-india/
Key takeaway:
“Therefore, this is my suggestion for America: a cheap, green and sustainable wall out of thorny cacti, which flourish in abundance in places like Texas and New Mexico. After all, since the wall won’t make any great difference, why waste money?”
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… where it’s also very likely there’s already some sort of physical barrier, you mean?
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Just a reminder.
THIS is the crap tens of thousands of people are not get paid for.
In other countries there would be allready an angry mob storming the white house and ripping the fat bastard to tiny orange shreds.
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I just found out that US air traffic controllers are working for free. These people are (normally) paid well so they don’t have to spend their working day worrying about putting food on the table and paying for their homes. But now they have to do those things and do their jobs safely. They can’t do both.
For safety’s sake, ATC and aviation should stop. And yes, there would hell to pay higher up for that.
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