Flaws delay virtual fence again - but Boeing is paid anyway

[zeezil]

Published: 09.24.2007
EDITORIAL
Our Opinion: Flaws delay virtual fence again - but Boeing is paid

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/opinion/63773.php
Tucson Citizen
letters@tucsoncitizen.com

It sounded like a good idea. String hundreds of towers along our southern and northern borders with radar, sensors and sophisticated cameras to protect us.

But one glitch after another has delayed operation of nine 98-foot towers already erected along 28 miles of the Arizona-Mexico border near Sasabe, southwest of Tucson.

And even if the "virtual fence" were working, it's unlikely to effectively deter illegal immigration in a region where tunneling and fake documentation are common.

The pilot towers program was to have begun three months ago. It was delayed in June because of a radar problem. Now it has stalled again because of a software problem.

Boeing Co., however, already has been paid three-fourths of its $20 million contract for the nine towers, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told The Associated Press last week.

Boeing's overall initial contract is for $67 million of program management, systems engineering and planning support for a string of about 1,800 such towers.

But technical glitches aren't the only problems with this plan.
Wednesday, authorities found another smuggling tunnel, this one stretching 250 feet from inside a house in San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico, into Arizona.

In June, a 600-foot tunnel had been found linking a home in Nogales, Sonora, with one in Nogales, Ariz.

And in July, a tunnel was found from inside a Nogales, Ariz., apartment to a Mexican drainage gate.

Neither a virtual fence of tall towers nor the actual border wall being erected in some stretches is likely to stop illegal immigration or smuggling - not if history is any indication.

The Great Wall of China, about 4,000 miles long, didn't keep out the northern barbarians.

A U.S.-built three-mile wall in Baghdad has only infuriated both the Sunni Muslims and the Shiites it separates, Reuters reported in April.

Meanwhile, fences topped with razor wire around wealthy enclaves in Spain and Morocco only prompted people to attempt sea voyages. Hundreds have drowned.

The idea that "good fences make good neighbors" has been belied throughout history.

As for the U.S., expect more tunnels and forged documents as work on the "virtual fence" continues.

Alas, border walls, checkpoints and unmanned aerial drones will prove to be a poor substitute for the solutions that truly are needed: a secure guest-worker program and binational cooperation to boost Mexico's economy and help its poor to stay home.

Until the cause of illegal immigration is addressed, all our expensive, high-tech efforts will act as mere Band-Aids on a deep, gaping wound.

[dragons5]

a secure guest-worker program and binational cooperation to boost Mexico's economy and help its poor to stay home.

well it's nice to see you want to grant amnesty you @#$)(@#$*#


but I do agree on boosting Mexico's Economy... oh wait. THEY HAVE THE WORLDS RICHEST MAN!

[slantedplanet]

Boost Mexico's economy? What about American workers who are
getting the shaft morning, noon, and night? What will we all do
when there are no jobs at all in America except working in
fast food or similar low-paying jobs.

[SOSADFORUS]

If you can not secure the Border Chertoff you need to give up your job, maybe outsource it!!

You are not going to get this done the easy way, we know you would like to by just giving amnesty to everyone and then you won't have to do your job!

Everyday you are proving to be more and more incompetant!!



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[slantedplanet]

What happens to those people on the US side of the border on whose
property the exit side of those tunnels are? Do they get prosecuted,
I wonder.