The Evolving Fence Along the US Border
Now that the immigration reform bill is dead, it is time to start paying attention to enforcement of existing laws. It is time to turn up the heat on the Bush administration. President Bush has been saying that he is for enforcement for a long time now, so now as part of his legacy he has an opportunity to prove it.
In fact, things have been quietly progressing:
The Border Patrol said it was on pace to hire thousands of agents, with the goal of a total of 18,000 by the end of 2008, up from just under 12,000 in 2006, when President Bush announced the push.
In addition, officials expect to have 370 miles of physical fencing by the end of next year.
Great, but more guards and a fence are not enough. High-tech sensors are needed too, such as for detecting tunnels. Sections of the fence could even be a virtual fence if this idea can be proven to work as well as a real fence. In fact, this experimental 28 miles of virtual fence looks promising (same link as above):
It comes in the form of nine nearly 100-foot-tall towers with radar, high-definition cameras and other equipment rising from the mesquite and lava fields around this tiny town.
Known as Project 28, for the 28 miles of border that the towers will scan, the so-called virtual fence forms the backbone of the Secure Border Initiative, known as SBInet, a multibillion-dollar mix of technology, manpower and fencing intended to control illegal border crossings.
If successful, hundreds of such towers could dot the 6,000 miles of the Mexican and Canadian borders.
So now is not the time to throw up our hands and say that the federal government will not enforce the immigration laws. Now is the time to demand that they do.
