cadenas
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quote:
ORIGINAL: TheHeretic
quote:
ORIGINAL: cadenas
Quite frankly, moral considerations aside, that approach wouldn't even work for any number of reasons. First, SCOTUS would overturn that on Constitutional grounds. A shoot-to-kill order would require an imminent danger from that specific person.
Second, these people already are risking their lives in the desert, and they are aware of that. They also already risk being shot at by drug smugglers and the like. What's the risk from a few bullets to them?
And where would you get all the snipers? With the 3000 mile border, you'd be looking at close to 400,000 snipers - which is nearly the entire US Army. Or of course you could only cover parts of the border, or only for a few hours per day. But then it becomes a simple matter of figuring out the schedule and finding an unprotected part of the border. Or immigrant smuggling would simply take a different route, over the ocean, flying, building tunnels could come back again, bribing immigration officials, ...
Finally, when we start shooting Mexican citizens, Mexico would be forced to get involved. Such as, by placing tanks along the border and shooting sniper positions. At that point, we'd have an all-out war.
So even the moral and legal issues aside, it's not even doable.
Oh dear Lord. Where are you coming up with this crap Cadena? The levels of dumb and ill-informed on this thread are just staggering. First somebody basically accuses me of making numbers up, based on his own incompetence to read the information he is linking to, now this...
Unless we have a treaty with Mexico that says their citizens can wander across the border anytime they like, the Supreme Court can't do much about the President in his role as CIC. What "Constitutional grounds" were you thinking of? That's before we get to the obvious fact that such a project would be highly classified.
Hearing that dumbass cousin Jose got ripped off by coyotes is one thing. Hearing that Uncle Eduardo's head exploded 200 yards into the States will leave a different impression.
The US border with Mexico is a little under 2000 miles, Cadena. It's a little over 3000 in kilometers. I'm hoping that is where you made the mistake, rather than knowing the US is roughly 3000 miles wide, and completely forgetting about the Gulf of Mexico being water across 1/3 of the southern US border. Care to explain how you arrived at 400,000 troops, or would it be easier to admit that you just pulled it out of your ass and hoped everybody would be too dumb to notice? We could put a 2-man team every mile (easy range), that's 4,000. Add 10-1 support, that's 40,000 for an operation far more elaborate and wasteful than anything I'm referring to. My 'plan' (I'm still not endorsing the idea) would require a fraction of that.
Mexico will get involved? A WAR??? That would be really stupid of them. I sometimes think about ways to really solve the issue of an utterly corrupt, third-world country on our border. One very plausible approach is for the President to call the commanders of Forts Hood and Sill, and tell them to move the divisions south a thousand miles or so. That is a country full of good people who deserve a lot better than the government they have.
Of course, if we had the sort of will to put a plan like either of these in motion, we would likely find the will to enforce the laws we have, and maybe do simple little things like, when an illegal immigrant is released from jail or prison, we load them on a bus out of the country, instead of just opening the gate. How about that one for a start?
Ad-hominem attacks are usually an admission that you are running low on facts. But I'll let that one slide.
Alright, so you want to use a CLASSIFIED program as a DETERRENT to illegal immigration? How exactly would the potential illegal immigrants find out about it if it is classified?
What Constitutional grounds? Let's see. Due process, for one. Even the police can't just shoot people willy-nilly. It seems like you want to treat it as some kind of war? That would have to be declared by Congress. Then there is the pesky issue that even if you do declare war on Mexico, you can only shoot at the Mexican military, not on unarmed civilians. And if the US deliberately shot at Mexican civilians, you can bet that Mexico would declare war. What do you think would happen if Mexico made a policy decision to shoot US citizens living illegally in Mexico (of which there are many; quite a few retirees haven't bothered with the proper visa procedures, for instance)?
Re. the length of the border, I stand corrected. 2000 miles rather than 3000. The number of snipers is based on the experience East Germany had - they used exactly this approach: fence + snipers (plus mine fields plus tripwire-triggered guns plus...) You would need a watchtower with three snipers every couple hundred feet. That's about 30 snipers per mile, not your two. Since they are humans and don't work around the clock, you will need 120 people per mile for 24/7 coverage. Since the border is only 2000 miles, that amounts to "only" 240,000 snipers. Not counting support personnel etc.
Of course you could reduce the number of people by not having 24/7 coverage, or not covering the whole border. But in that case, it becomes a fairly simple exercise for smugglers to determine which parts of the border are safe.
< Message edited by cadenas -- 6/18/2009 5:24:49 AM >
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RE: Minutemen not protecting US citizens - 
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