Home of Today's Common Sense

Published Brownsville Herald March 9, 2008

This week we heard that the “technology based” border protection package was delivered and the “Secretary of Homeland Security” proclaimed it up and ready as he had seen it personally. Then we heard that it didn’t work! I wonder what it was that was working – obviously politics was working.

I have been silent on this issue as I am very biased. I worked for U.S. Customs for more than 25 years and then watched a formerly efficient entity with a clear purpose, be combined into a mess of other agencies without a clear direction for anyone. 

The border control problem has not been approached in reality, it has only been fiddled with in order to satisfy some segments of certain political constituencies. To my knowledge no nation has ever been able to effectively control their borders, the iron curtain did and the bamboo curtain does a better job than most but only because they are not afraid to shoot. The only thing we had going for the “fence” was the use of technology, the physical fence only promises to divide our nation and even neighbors in our community as no other thing has. Just here in Brownsville the University will be segmented by the fence and individual properties that have been in the came families long before the United States was formed are being seized. Promises of continuing litigation abound!  More »