Its future uncertain, barrier on the border going up quickly.

I am totally in favor of a fence. I do not think it is the complete answer to uncontrolled immigration but it is better than our current system. For you open borders are best types. I ask why do you live in gated communities and still lock your doors and put alarms on your cars? Open up everything you own if you are so trusting.

Times are hard and American’s needs jobs. We can no longer afford to take the trash of others. With controlled immigration, we could still allow sizable numbers to enter the US but we should pick them ourselves. The bottom line is the vast majority of the worlds population would love to immigrate, we can’t take them all but we can take the ones who have something to add to our country.

Now before everyone attacks me. I fully realize not all immigrants, legal or not are “trash” but the crime stats speak for themselves, we have a problem and ignoring it is no solution.

I am actually against one-stop fits all solutions many immigrants have proved their worth, especially the ones who arrived many years ago. I think a penalty is fair, they did break our laws but some clearly have proven worthy of citizenship. Violent criminal illegals should serve time and be deported and never allowed back. Commit a violent crime and your finished, no second chance.

28 April, 2008 (AP)
WASHINGTON – The U.S. fence along the Mexican border is less a wall than a stuttering set of blockades: half barrier, half gaps.

Americans are split pretty much the same way: half in favor, half against, passionate on both sides when it comes to the idea of erecting a wall to keep people from entering the country illegally.

It can seem a shaky foundation as the United States rushes to complete the fencing on nearly 700 miles of the border by the end of the year. That’s when a new administration arrives in the White House with its own ideas about security, freedom, the 11 million illegal immigrants already here and the prospect of many more on the way.

Nearly half complete, the multibillion-dollar fence project stretches from the Pacific surf at Tijuana to the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville, Texas. The messages it sends are decidedly mixed.

For Rep. Peter King, the New York Republican who wrote the legislation to build the fence, the message is simple: Don’t sneak into America; we are taking control of our borders.

For others, the fence is inconsistent with a country founded by immigrants and priding itself on opportunity.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says it’s simply a new law enforcement device, part of a multipronged crackdown on the flow of illegal immigrants. The government also has hired more border agents, stepped up enforcement nationwide and increased penalties for those who don’t follow the law.

“I don’t invest the fence with the iconic significance that some people place on it,” Chertoff says. “To some people, it is a be-all and end-all of controlling the border. To some people, it is a symbol of … the Berlin Wall. I think it’s a tool.”

The concept of a border fence took on new life after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which revived the heated immigration debate. Intelligence officials have said the holes along the southwest border could provide places for terrorists to enter the country.

About 317 miles of the southwest border fence have been built, with plans for another 353 miles by the end of the year. Longer term, there are plans for physical fencing or surveillance and detection technology along the entire 2,000-mile border by 2010.

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll last month found Americans just about as split as they could be: 49 percent in favor of the fence, 48 percent opposed. Tellingly, a majority of 55 percent think it won’t fix the problem.

Congress already has allocated $2.7 billion for fence construction, and there’s no estimate how much the entire system – the physical fence and technology – will cost to build, let alone maintain.

The new construction includes completion of a nearly solid stretch from San Diego to Yuma, Ariz.; a new section extending several miles in each direction from Lukeville, Ariz.; additional lengths flanking Nogales, Ariz., and Columbus, N.M.; extension of the current barrier at El Paso; new sections near the Texas border towns of Esperanza, Presidio, Del Rio and Eagle Pass, and a dotted line of fence stretching from Roma to past Brownsville.

Border fences have been sprouting across California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas for decades – dating to the 1940s, when the International Boundary and Water Commission built 234 miles of fence to keep out foot-and-mouth disease.

As a result, the U.S. fence is a patchwork of old and new construction and in varying states of repair; the only consistency is a uniform ugliness.

In San Diego, rusted, corrugated metal wades ashore from the Pacific onto a beach and becomes a 9-mile wall that dips into canyons, runs along hillsides and jogs beside a highway. In Arizona, short vertical posts, some connected by horizontal rails, mesh fencing and World War II surplus corrugated steel sheets are scattered along the border from Yuma to Douglas. In New Mexico, 15-foot poles poke up from the desert floor on either side of the Columbus port of entry, rust-colored pipes just inches from each other, allowing enough space to wriggle a hand between. And in Texas, dull gray panels of thick steel fencing curve along the Rio Grande through downtown El Paso, patched here and there with mismatched pieces of metal.