You may be wondering why Syrian and Iraqi refugees are pouring into Europe rather than into, say nearby Saudi Arabia. Well, Saudi officials planned ahead.
Although the Israelis are the most renown anti-immigrant border fence builders, which is why Hungary and Bulgaria are negotiating with Israel right now, it’s really not that arcane an art. For example, if you can build an airliner, you can build a really good fence, like Airbus is building for Saudi Arabia. In fact, fence-building is one of the oldest and most developed crafts and there are no doubt perfectly fencing contractors with a few miles of you right now, wherever you are. When people tell you it’s practically impossible or unbelievably expensive to keep out economic immigrants, they are either lying or ignorant or both.
Comments to Steve Sailer:
* 900 km = 552 miles, or 28% the length of the 1954 mile US border with Mexico.
Saudi Arabia has less than 1/10th as many people as the US and less than 40% of our per capita income. Adjusted for population and income, if Saudi Arabia can afford a $3.4 billion border fence then the US should be able to afford a $92 billion fence.
An equivalent length US fence, though, would only cost $12.1 billion based on what the Saudis paid. That’s more than I expected, based on a rough guesstimate of ~$1,000 per foot (~$10 billion), and it might be more given higher pay rates for American workers, but it would be quite reasonable at even twice the price.
Funny that it’s affordable for the Saudis but not for us. I mean after all, what did we ever do that Saudi Arabia hasn’t done – besides land on the moon, defeat the empires of both Germany and Japan, invent much of the modern computer industry, and win approximately a zillion times as many Nobels?
* Fences give you time and options they give you a secure base to operate from and an area to cover. Multilayered defense like the Israelis build could and does stop actual terrorists every stinking day. I think it can stop most anybody as long as it is manned.
* An effective border fence is not a passive thing – it must be monitored and patrolled constantly at significant expense. It’s not just a fence, it’s a whole system of layered defense. You must also be willing to kill fence crossers in order to discourage future fence crossers – after a while only the most determined/crazy try so you don’t have to actually kill a lot of people, but you do have to be willing to kill a few at the beginning until people get the message. Maybe some of these victims will be sympathetic – cute little kids shot full of lead and left to bleed in the death strip. You have to be willing to see these pictures printed in the papers, on TV, etc. (unless you have the power to control the media). This requires national will. Frankly, the West no longer has that kind of will. One picture of a dead baby (0r maybe a baby deer) shot by the spring guns and they would have to tear the whole thing down. Our crisis is not one of capability or funding – we (for now at least) still have plenty of these things. It is a crisis of will.
* “You must also be willing to kill fence crossers in order to discourage future fence crossers…”
WTF? Uh, no you don’t. You catch them. You fingerprint them and take other data. Then you return them to the other side with the stern rebuke that if they’re caught again they’ll go to jail for five years.
As part of border security a fence is only a second tier solution. Interior enforcement – denying illegals jobs, drivers licenses, vehicle registrations, public education, and other government benefits is far more important. And many of those things are well within our grasp, as we already have a very large and quite effective administrative state.
To get my kid into the local school, for example, I have to show multiple documents to prove we live within school boundaries. I have to show them every single school year. Having those bureaucrats require verification of citizenship wouldn’t take much more of their time.
* Using the cost of Israel’s border fence with Egypt, I estimate a similar fence on our southern border would cost about $5.3 billion.
* It’s a bargain at triple the price. Plus all 2,000 miles of the Mexican border don’t need an intensively patrolled fence. Half of it does though this will need to be expanded as Mexican criminal organizations find their old routes blocked off-fenced off.
Key principles of Israeli fence building are:
-see through fencing so you can see infiltrators coming
-parallel patrol road for immediate armed response to intrusions
-remote sensors and cameras
-countless miles of razor wire to slow down intruders
-they do erect walls in urban areas but 90% of the West Bank security barrier is a patrolled see-through fence
Donald Trump always calls it a wall but the best barrier on the Mexican border would copy the Israeli and Saudi fences. They have shown the way. Just bring in the best Israeli and Saudi/Airbus consultants and start building within a month or two.
Similar to the way Trump got the Wolman skating rink in Central park rebuilt in three months (1986) after NYC wasted five years and millions of dollars. Trump went to the foremost builder of outdoor skating rinks in Canada and hired them to build the correct size refrigeration units (two of them) and to supervise the proper laying of coolant pipe and concrete.
* One of the tests of every law should be “is this important enough to kill people over if you have to in order to enforce the law?” For example, in NY , the police ended up killing a Gentle Giant (TM) when they arrested him for selling onesies (single cigarettes) on the street. This shouldn’t have been a crime in the first place (and you should be able to buy a whole pack of cigarettes in a regular store for a buck, which is what they would cost if the government hadn’t gotten involved). But once you make the decision to make this a law, then breaking the law involves law enforcement and sometimes law enforcement ends up killing people who refuse to obey the law. It’s inevitable even if you don’t have killing people as your primary goal.
Smuggling people across the border (in the US and in Europe) is a multi-billion $ business – almost as big as the drug business (and you have to be able to breach the border in order to smuggle drugs also). The people who are involved in this business are hardened criminals who are willing to kill people, including often their own customers. They are not going away easily. You are going to need to use violence to counter their violence.
The idea that you can “just arrest them” is not going to work. As Whiskey said, the border police can easily be outnumbered by masses of immigrants. Sure a patrol can arrest one lone crosser but what if 1,000 rush the border all at once? The reason the E. Germans ended up with spring guns is because they knew their own border patrolmen didn’t have the heart to shoot civilians, women, children, etc. Automatic guns don’t care. As I said before, once you install these you really don’t have to kill a lot of people – the total # killed by the E. German system over 30+ years was tiny (esp. compared to the millions that died in WWII – a cold war was much better than a hot war). Anyone in his right mind stays well away from the “death strip” and by the time you have reached that zone you have gone thru razor wire, etc. so you don’t just wander in there by accident.
