THE JOKE OF BORDER SECURITY

OBAMA, AND HIS LA RAZA DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY = PATHWAY TO CITIZENHSHIP... HAS NEVER PLANNED TO SECURE OUR BORDERS!

WE HAVE TO LOOK ONLY AT WHAT OBAMA HAS DONE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE OF ARIZONA WHO ATTEMPTED TO SECURE THE BORDERS FOR FURTHER PROOF OF THIS HISPANDERING PRESIDENT'S SELL OUT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!

October 30, 2010
Virtual Failure on the BorderIt is past time to pull the plug on the “virtual fence” that the federal government has been trying to erect on the border with Mexico. The Secure Border Initiative Network — a series of towers with radar and cameras that is supposed to spot trespassers along most of the 2,000 miles of border — is a costly failure.

The $7.6 billion project (that was the original estimate) was championed by President George W. Bush in 2006 and initially embraced by President Obama.

The supposedly whiz-bang technology was plagued from the start by software bugs. Sensors and alarms were stymied by tumbleweeds and high winds. The cost kept rising and the delivery date kept slipping. Four years after being introduced — and with more than $1 billion already spent — barely 50 miles of the border has been covered.

This year, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano halted new work on SBInet and diverted $50 million of its funding to other uses. She should kill it once and for all when the contract with its prime contractor, Boeing, ends next month.

The job of laying an electronic net over 2,000 miles was never going to be easy. Reports from the Government Accountability Office describe a meltdown by both government and industry.

Deadlines on deployment kept slipping, by years. The G.A.O. also said it was “unclear and uncertain what technology capabilities were to be delivered when.” It criticized Boeing for giving “incomplete and anomalous” evaluation data, leaving Homeland Security unable to hold the company to standards for controlling costs and meeting deadlines.

The “virtual fence” was a misbegotten idea from the start, based on the faulty premise that controlling immigration is as simple as closing the border — and that closing the border is a simple matter of more sensors, more fencing and more boots on the ground. So long as there is a demand for cheap labor, a hunger for better jobs here, and almost no legal way to get in, people will keep finding ways around any fence, virtual or not.

Border security cannot work unless it is accompanied by a real effort at comprehensive immigration reform. There is no getting back the $1 billion already wasted. We can avoid squandering billions more.