The Sacramento Bee May 28, 2006
Back Talk: On the border line
THE LOWDOWN: The U.S. Senate votes 62-36, approving immigration legislation. • The legislation creates a guest worker program, tightens border control. Most common words describing it: "Overhaul" and "Sweeping." • President Vicente Fox visits Sacramento, saying "We want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem." • Here's a look.
BREAK IT DOWN
The proposals to secure the southern border in the heated debates regarding immigration have raised practical questions. How do you do that? How effective are those methods? Can they make the border as difficult to cross as is it is to get through the line at the airport without being wanded? ¿Sí se puede, o no?We can't answer that, but we can look at the proposals to plug the porous border.
The fence: The debate would make Joseph F. Glidden proud. Can you make a fence, put up a wall to stop people from crossing? The Senate bill passed Thursday calls for 370 miles of triple-layer fences (we'll define that soon), costing $3 million a mile. That leaves about ... 1,600 or so miles along the border. Or, as Jimmy Kimmel joked: "So, I guess the message is, 'go around.' " Bush has said repeatedly, though, that fencing has its limitations.
(And who is Glidden? He is considered the father of barbed wire. Want to sound smart? He patented barbed wire in the 1870s. This doesn't help you with the immigration argument, except you can throw it in a conversation if the debate gets too heated.)
The fence, part 2: The House bill passed last December calls for 700 miles of fencing. (Still arguing, need more Glidden information? Let's see, he fought a three-year legal battle for the patent, creating a market for what was known as "The Devil's Rope.")
The fence, part 3: Triple layer. Sounds like a cake. Here's what that is: Three fences, with patrol roads between them.
The fence, part 4: Not on the table, but the government did figure out what it would cost to build a fence over the 2,000 miles. That would be between $4 billion and $8 billion. A bit of a range. And they figured a regular old 10-foot prison chain-link fence with razor wire would cost $851 million. For a mere $362 million, that sucker could be electrified. You want a concrete wall -- 12-foot tall, 2 feet thick, painted even -- that's going to cost $2 billion.
Last fence item: The border already has fences. Check out Operation Gatekeeper, 14 miles of fence on the San Diego border.
Sensors and cameras: The Border Patrol has more than 400 pole-mounted cameras. It has also placed more than 6,700 motion and seismic sensors along the Texas and California border. Animals still occasionally trigger them.
Drones: Got 'em. Or had one.The Border Patrol had an unmanned aerial vehicle (a UAV), equipped with a surveillance camera. Cost $6.5 million. That's a lot of megapixels. It crashed last month.
Sources: Bee archives, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, GlobalSecurity.org, Amazon.com.
© Copyright 2006, The Sacramento Bee
