[redpoint5]

The wall sounds stupid and expensive to me. We'd need to derive at least as much benefit from the wall as it costs to construct, maintain, and patrol. Mine fields are inhumane and dangerous, as there will surely be casualties from people not intending to cross the border. The most cost effective solution would probably involve small UAVs that patrol the border 24/7 with FLIR cameras and algorithms to detect humans in the zone of interest, with border agents at certain intervals. Get the % of successful crossings low enough, and people will give up trying to cross illegally altogether.

Our immigration policy probably needs to be better, and it should be merit based. Not wanting people in the US because they are brown is absurd, but not wanting criminals, terrorists, or too many people all at once is not absurd.

Every country has borders along with immigration policy, and various methods to which they enforce the rules. Perhaps nothing more defines a country than the borders established and the rules set forth for citizenship.

If someone jumped the border from South Korea and got shot entering North Korea, very few people would care, and many would think something along the lines of "you idiot".

I'm not saying we should be shooting people crossing the border, only saying that we have a double-standard by which some of us think it's unacceptable to enforce immigration policy in the US, but totally acceptable for other countries to enforce their policy as they see fit. There is cognitive dissonance to say that we should have borders, but that those borders shouldn't mean anything.