The current crisis in immigration is leading many, especially here in Arizona where we are entering the primary season, to renew calls to “secure the border.” This is especially apparent among the Republican contenders where each candidate is trying to go yet further to the right with calls for border securing.

What is completely missing is any discussion of what this actually means. How “secure” do we want the border to be? Impervious? Slightly leaky? Against whom do we want to secure it? All non-Americans? Everyone through border crossings?

Which borders are we talking about? Our border with Canada is almost twice as long as our border with Mexico. Assuming we’re just talking about Mexico, presumably we don’t need to worry about those friendly, productive Canadians as just as white [actually probably more white] than we are, even if some of them do speak French), the Mexican border is 1,993 miles long. More than one candidate suggests that the border be secured by the Army.

Thinking too hard about this, if we were to decide we need to station troops at 500 foot intervals, we’d be looking at a force of more than 35,000 men. Troops that would need to be housed, fed, trained, along with a border infrastructure that might include a number of features. Here we could call on our old friends in the German Democratic Republic (aka East Germany) for advice on the construction of a Wall. In its prime, the Wall included  a 300-foot No-Man’s-Land, an additional inner wall, soldiers patrolling with dogs, a raked ground that showed footprints, anti-vehicle trenches, electric fences, massive light systems, watchtowers, bunkers, and minefields. So, 35,000 men, walls, mine fields, and almost 2,000 miles of good old East German know-how just might do the job. They’d be particularly effective against the current onslaught of Central American children.

While Erik Honnecker, the prime mover in East Germany for the construction of the original Wall, is dead, surely many of his commanders are still alive and could offer assistance of both a physical and ideological nature.

Yes, I know that takes the problem to the absurd (although it wasn’t absurd to the East German ideologues who created it, nor to those who build the Great Wall of China against the Mongol hordes), but the current posturing around the issue and the failure of America to address this as a policy and, increasingly, humanitarian issue, is distressing. We are experiencing to an increasing degree the kind of diaspora in our own backyard from the southern American states that is visible in Syria and Iraq .

We need to find politicians that can address the problem in its complexity, not simple raise calls to ‘secure the border’ to mobilize a political base or increase our jingoist prejudices. I fear we will wait a long while for this to happen, and that what incurs in the interim might only deepen the divide.

Late July Update

As the Republican Campaign for Governor heats up, as suspected, the top two Republication candidates, Christine Jones and Doug Ducey, continue to try to outdo each other in their run to the right on border security. Jones claims she going to “deploy 1,200 troops to the border, use technology to monitor who’s coming and going, finish the fence, and send Obama the bill”. So where are the troops coming from? Arizona has troops? Even if the National Guard were used, the state would foot the bill unless the Federal Government agreed to help.

Even Jones admits her plan will cost the state $270 million. Personally I’d triple that: I estimate building a secure, East Berlin like Wall would cost at least $500 million using the length of the border and per mile prices on a building project like two lanes of interstate for the length of the border. And 1,700 troops is about 1/3 of what would be needed, and that the deployment of 1,200 troops during Operation Phalanx (2010-2011) cost $11o million according to a blog posting by Stephen Lemons in the Phoenix New Times. So total on-going costs in the range of $400 million a year.

Ducey chides her for this, but has no counter plan, other than “using every resource at my commend”, including “fencing, satellites, guardsmen, more police and more prosecutors.” But without indication of what the cost would be or how he would pay for it. All this, while lowering taxes, according to his Web site, “with a goal of pushing income tax rates as close to zero as possible.”

It would be amusing if it weren’t so cynical and ultimately tragic for the state if either gets elected. But don’t count it: it’s likely that one of them will be the Republican candidate. And in Arizona, that’s more than half the battle.