Perry: Border Fence “Nonsensical”
Rick Perry again denounced the border fence today in a speech to the Dallas Hispanic Chamber. It is so nice finally to agree with the governor on something. On the subject of the fence, one state official I spoke with recently said that many people don’t realize that building a fence, which in some points will be as much as a mile from the Rio Grande, effectively cedes the river and parts of the U.S. between the river and the fence to Mexico. He not only considers the fence a bad idea from a policy standpoint, but also believes it sets a dangerous de facto precedent for future U.S.-Mexico relations. IJS.
3 Comments to “Perry: Border Fence “Nonsensical””
Leave a Reply
All material copyright © 2009 D Magazine. All rights reserved.
So, does Rick (or Wick) have a suggestion on how to stop the senseless deaths of the poor economic refugees who needlessly cross the border in the middle of a desert? The GAO says (pdf link) there were 472 deaths of border crossers in 2005 alone, twice the number of deaths in 1995. A fence, at a minimum, would cause the migrants who are crossing the border to think about where they’re going to cross and hopefully encourage them to use safer routes. Like official border crossings where can count them too.
On the subject of dangerous de facto precedents, that goes both ways.
Has everyone noticed the correlation between those claiming a border wall will never work and those opposed to stopping illegal immigration? If a wall truely would not be effective, it would not receive such opposition from those in favor of the status quo.
And the anti-wall crowd isn’t fooling anyone when they say we should use “existing technology” to control the border–it’s obvious they don’t want to control it all.
Of course the conservatives don’t want to wall up the border. How, then, will they get that cheap labor, willing to work for $1 a day with no benefits?????