h a l f b a k e r yI like this idea, only I think it should be run by the government.
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The US - Mexican border is 3150 km long.
The US seems to have an issue with illegal immigration from Mexico.
We propose the following solution.
Build a chain of huts, sangars, bunkers or whatever else is appropriate 100 m
back from the border, and 100m apart. This is a total of 31,500 observation
points.
All US citizens between the ages of 18 and 25 are required to perform one year's
border-guarding service. They receive 12 weeks basic training.
2 persons for each of 31,500 OP's, 8 hour shifts, 365 days a year, plus allowances
for leave, sickness etc. requires at any one time about 250,000 personnel, which
will have a noticeable effect on youth unemployment, and substantially improve
border security; it will also mean that the youngsters are actively involved in
protecting their own future employment prospects.
Those inclined to indulge in a bit of smuggling, be it people or anything else, will
receive appropriately harsh treatment.
Samuel Johnson
http://en.m.wikiquo...wiki/Samuel_Johnson
April 7, 1775, p. 253 [8th of 7, Mar 03 2014]
[link]
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O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee. |
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O Canada!
Nuestra tierra casera y nativa!
El amor verdadero del patriota en todos thy hijos ordena.
Con los corazones que brillan intensamente vemos subida del thee,
El norte verdadero fuerte y libre!
De lejos y de par en par,
O Canadá, nos colocamos en el guardia para el thee.
Dios mantiene nuestra tierra gloriosa y libre!
O Canadá, nos colocamos en el guardia para el thee.
O Canadá, nos colocamos en el guardia para el thee. |
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I am USA citizen because my mom stopped by a US Hospital when I was born. I want to be an observer and so does my brother, Mike. (That way we can let the rest of the family across the borders.) I am 20 years old. I speak French, English And Spanish. |
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A somewhat psychopathic alternative: |
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1. Buy Guatemala and Belize. (Or steal them if you can't). |
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2. Now set up border enterprise zones down there your corporate citizens can occupy by buying them from the individual poor Guatemalans and Belizians they're initially assigned to (just to damp down the enthusiasm for rebellion, you understand). |
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The legal and tax environment is tabula rasa if you can actually buy Belize. |
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3. Do better. Set up areas in which you commence building basic, but habitable cities (ask the Chinese how), where Mexican immigrants can live in peace after knock-off time. |
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4. Do even better than that. Create a new form of residence right that is almost citizenship. Call it"perpetual residence" perhaps. Like citizenship, once you have it you can't easily lose it. |
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In short, keep doing things that make the southern border of Mexico more attractive than the north - mostly at a healthy profit -- eg. make the housing in lieu of wages. |
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And then brace yourself for the impact. My guess is that Mexicans are a net economic gain to the US, not a loss. (But maybe I'm wrong.) |
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Yeah, but how often was she attacked by spinning
nickels? |
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// She could hit a spinning nickel in the rain at 100 yards.
// |
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I sincerely doubt that; the accumulated mass and
resistance of the rain on the coin would cause it to cease
spinning long before the prescribed 100 yards could be
accurately measured and marked out. Up here we'd say she
could split a ball at a hundred*
paces, which refers to an old flintlock trick that I have seen
performed numerous times. Clearly my colloquilalism is
superior to yours. |
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* traditionally pronounced 'hunnert' |
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[skoomphemph] - //net economic gain// A lot of
the wages earned by Mexican nationals in the US
are sent back to families remaining in Mexico.
However, once there, there's a dearth of things to
spend it on in the legitimate economy; a fair
chunk of it goes into the drug cartels - not just
direct purchase of drugs, but also protection
money, and first-level legit trade with cartel-
controlled businesses. |
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There's no possibility of recovery from that mess,
either - Mexico can't build an economy without a
work force, and they don't have one because the
US has taken it. |
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// Mexico can't build an economy without a work force, // |
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Trained, educated and healthy workforce ... |
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// and they don't have one because the US has taken it. // |
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There is an exit route for Mexico ... |
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The US bought Louisiana from the french (and got stiffed on THAT
deal). |
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The US bought Alaska from the Russians. |
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The US could buy Mexico from the Mexicans, one province at a time,
from north to south, complete with sitting tenants. |
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The length of border to protect gets progressively shorter. |
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The remnant of Mexico gets richer to the point where leaving is
undesireable. |
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Then all you have to do is look after a much shorter border with
Guatemala and Belize. |
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More border hoo haw stuff. The thing that puzzles
me is why Mexico can't be our China, here in the US.
We get all this stuff made in China. All that stuff
must cross the Pacific. I conclude that the cost
increase conferred by the Pacific is still not enough
to make Mexican goods competitive. |
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Current global economic trends would seem to support your
conclusion. |
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[21] automation will replace those jobs anyway. The
level of dislocation that is coming to the job market
will dwarf anything we've already seen, and will
affect professionals to a much higher degree than it
ever has. But then the opportunities created are
also quite unpredictable, so I think on balance, Jerry
Seinfeld will wind up being ok. |
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@lurch : Yes all I made was an uninformed guess, there. Could be the immigration works out mutually detrimental, too. |
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I do have a sure fire cure for the drug problem, though. |
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All you need to do is take it out of the hands of the kind of people who would rape your dear old Gran for fun, or put you in chains and sell you to Vogons as a snack. |
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All you need to do is remove the problem from the darkness and bring it up into the light. |
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I'm not suggesting laissez faire legalisation. All I'm saying is if it's not a crime to use the stuff, it's use can be otherwise regulated (to the extent possible). |
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I don't know how much control it's possible to have over the drug trade, but anything seems better to me than the nothing we have today. It's just the Prohibition with a different monopoly given to the scum of the Earth. |
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I could go into a great more detail, but seeing as I'm already probably a little across the border between here and the forbidden lands of advocacy, I'll stop myself. |
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//most certainly NOT taken their workforce// |
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Historically, the most common way for a country
to lose its workforce was to be engaged in war,
where the young able-bodied employables would
end up dead, whether at home or away. |
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In this case, those employables are no longer
available to Mexico, but they're not dead, they're
*here*. When I say "taken", I don't intend to imply
a conscious act of causality and/or abduction; just
that we've got 'em, Mexico doesn't, possession is
nine points of the law and deportation isn't
keeping up with the other 10 percent. |
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I think [skoomphemph] and [8th] are on the right
track with economic development south of the
border. Personally, I'd probably go for a 49-year
lease, Hong-Kong style, on the state of Sonora;
but that's just implementation details. |
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Were it not for things like nationalism (which I suppose is just patriotism taken so far that it starts to impede common sense), the 49 year lease idea would have serious potential to solve both sets of problems in a mutually beneficial way, [lurch]. |
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It would make the line where the US ends, and Mexico begins nice and fuzzy, if done right (whatever that may be, as to the details). Between very-US and very-Mexican areas would lie a merge zone. Here, the schools etc would be bilingual, for instance. |
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And the jobs there would be US jobs, kept in the US. |
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And the jobs there would be Mexican jobs kept in Mexico. |
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Pity that is just never ever going to happen (just as a sensible reality-based drugs policy is never going to happen.) |
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// nationalism (which I suppose is just patriotism taken so far that it
starts to impede common sense) // |
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"Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly
uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many
will start: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." But let it be
considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our
country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and
countries, have made a cloak of self-interest." (Boswell) |
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The right thing to do would be to leave the issue of whether to maintain the status quo when the lease comes up for renewal in the hands of the citizens of Sonora - scoundrelly patriots that they would've come to be. |
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Maybe if the Mexican government could keep things like mineral rights, forestry, oases, and "fixed assets" like that, they might even start to look to see how they could shape a deal. (For the US some progress in the hopeless war on drugs might be enough to move them; they're not the ones supplying the land, after all.) |
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Maybe we can cross-pollinate the drugs out of
existence. Develop a reproductively-superior breed
of poppy plant, coca plant, etc. that does not
contain the trippy chemicals in question. I'd propose
that as a halfbakery idea but we have a moratorium
on genetic engineering here. |
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