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.-- 8th of 7, Mar 01 2014 Samuel Johnson http://en.m.wikiquo...wiki/Samuel_JohnsonApril 7, 1775, p. 253 [8th of 7, Mar 03 2014] 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.
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.
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.-- popbottle, Mar 01 2014 A somewhat psychopathic alternative:
1. Buy Guatemala and Belize. (Or steal them if you can't).
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).
The legal and tax environment is tabula rasa if you can actually buy Belize.
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.
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.
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.
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.)-- skoomphemph, Mar 02 2014 Yeah, but how often was she attacked by spinning nickels?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 02 2014 // She could hit a spinning nickel in the rain at 100 yards. //
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.
* traditionally pronounced 'hunnert'-- Alterother, Mar 02 2014 [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.
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.-- lurch, Mar 02 2014 // Mexico can't build an economy without a work force, //
Trained, educated and healthy workforce ...
// and they don't have one because the US has taken it. //
"taken" ?
Sp. "lured"
There is an exit route for Mexico ...
The US bought Louisiana from the french (and got stiffed on THAT deal).
The US bought Alaska from the Russians.
The US could buy Mexico from the Mexicans, one province at a time, from north to south, complete with sitting tenants.
This would mean that -
The US gets bigger.
The length of border to protect gets progressively shorter.
The remnant of Mexico gets richer to the point where leaving is undesireable.
Then all you have to do is look after a much shorter border with Guatemala and Belize.-- 8th of 7, Mar 02 2014 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.-- bungston, Mar 02 2014 Current global economic trends would seem to support your conclusion.-- Alterother, Mar 02 2014 [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.-- theircompetitor, Mar 02 2014 @lurch : Yes all I made was an uninformed guess, there. Could be the immigration works out mutually detrimental, too.
I do have a sure fire cure for the drug problem, though.
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.
All you need to do is remove the problem from the darkness and bring it up into the light.
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).
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.
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.-- skoomphemph, Mar 02 2014 //most certainly NOT taken their workforce//
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.
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.
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.-- lurch, Mar 02 2014 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].
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.
And the jobs there would be US jobs, kept in the US.
And the jobs there would be Mexican jobs kept in Mexico.
Pity that is just never ever going to happen (just as a sensible reality-based drugs policy is never going to happen.)-- skoomphemph, Mar 03 2014 // nationalism (which I suppose is just patriotism taken so far that it starts to impede common sense) //
"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)
<link>-- 8th of 7, Mar 03 2014 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.
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.)-- skoomphemph, Mar 03 2014 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.-- RayfordSteele, Mar 03 2014 random, halfbakery