Friday, June 02, 2006

Is It al-Reuters or is It Me?

There’s a news account up on al-Reuters today about Texas Governor Perry’s plans to monitor his state’s borders with cameras, creating a “virtual” border patrol. The cameras would obviously have their own website since the streaming images would be publicly available and people could call in their observations:

Spotting Illegals
Speaking to a gathering of sheriffs from border counties, Perry said virtual border patrollers spotting illegal immigrants would be able to call a toll-free phone number to report them to Texas authorities.

“A stronger border is what Americans want and it’s what our security demands and that is what Texas is going to deliver,” he said.

The cameras, which would cost $5 million to install along the state’s 1,000-mile border with Mexico, will be trained on “criminal hot spots and common routes used to enter this country,” he said.

Then al-Reuters reports this:

The proposal by Perry, a Republican running for re-election in November, comes amid a right-wing-led campaign against illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Is this really a “right wing-led” campaign against illegal immigration? Is it true that no one besides the rabid right is against wide-open borders? Except for that vile fringe, is everyone else just chomping at the bit to throw the doors open and invite illegal aliens to come home for supper, maybe rent a spare bedroom?

Another question: in the counties of this country which immediately abut the border with Mexico, how many of the citizens there are actively against strengthening the integrity of our southern border? I mean people who actually live and work there, not the ones who come in especially to “help” the aliens.

3 comments:

Papa Ray said...

I have only seen groups that are helping the illegals in California. But to be honest, I don't know for sure.

What I do know for sure is that cameras were tried on the Canadian border and either through contractor fraud or inferiour cameras most of them are not functioning.

Perry is determined to ride the immigration issue to re-election. But most voters in Texas will remember that he has been asked and asked to do something about it for years and didn't do much of anything.

Yep, its the right wing neo-con Texans that are leading this charge.

But, not the cameras, we want a hundred foot high fence that goes into the ground a hundred feet and that is electrified and surrounded by popup-mines that spray the worse mace ever made.

Oh, We also want the illegals to build it for us. Chuck at tcoverride suggested that almost a year ago and it still sounds good to me.

Papa Ray

Wally Ballou said...

When I was in Costa Rica a few years ago, there was a lot of hand-wringing about illegal immigration there. Costa Rica is the economically free-est and the most properous country in Central America (coincidence?). Their vast national parks were suffering from the depredations of Nicaraguans who illegally immigrate and set up slash-and-burn homesteads. Apparently there are a lot of right-wing republicans there, because local sentiment was universally in favor of controlling immigration.

El Jefe Maximo said...

Folks who actually live on the border are the ones most loudly demanding that something be done.

Of course, anything that we might do to defend ourselves, or the national border, or that otherwise asserts our right to protect the existence of an American nationality, or to protect the rights of Americans to find work without having their wages undercut by illegal competition from outside, is racist, right wing, and looked down on by all right-thinking people. The good leftie is automatically to anything that smacks of nationalism.

Al-Reuters little missive about the "right-wing campaign against illegal immigration" -- is right, however, to recognize that enforcement of the laws appears to be primarily a right wing concern: that is, if they are laws concerned with protecting us. The only laws liberals appear to care about enforcing are those protecting snail darters, or those the right of the press to undercut support for the war.