Dusk falls over a section of the US-Mexico border fence near Campo, California. (PHOTO CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES)
FROM CNN's Jack Cafferty:
President Bush once called it "the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history."
He was talking about the "virtual fence," a twenty million dollar hi-tech detection device along the Arizona-Mexico border designed to keep illegal aliens from coming into this country. Trouble is it doesn't work.
Now the government is scrapping the prototype, just two months after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff approved it. The system is failing to alert border security agents of illegal crossings.
Agents began using the fence in December and it has been responsible for more than three thousand apprehensions. The problem is more than 3,000 illegal aliens enter the United States every day.
Time for Plan "B." The government will replace the virtual fence with a series of towers with communications systems, cameras and radar.
In case you're keeping track, 9/11 happened six and a half years ago. And since then in the name of national security the Bush administration has spied on Americans without a warrant, approved torture of terror suspects, ignored the Geneva conventions, made airline travel more complicated than going by covered wagon, invaded a sovereign country that had done nothing to us, and bankrupted the treasury. But they haven't secured the nation's borders.
In fact, illegal aliens with torches, hacksaws, ladders, and bungee cords have come right through miles of existing border fence. Holes in the fence are big enough for an average-sized woman to squeeze through.
And border agents in Texas, Arizona, and California often have to repair the same sections of the existing fence every day.
Here’s my question to you: Why in the years following 9/11 has the government refused to secure our nation's borders?
Interested to know which ones made it on air?
Lisa from Huntsville, Alabama writes:
The question shouldn't be why hasn't the government secured our borders – the question should be why we've let them sit by and do nothing. They do, after all, work for us, the citizens.
Ken from St. Paul, Minnesota writes:
C'mon Jack, the president is a politician. He knows full well that a completely secure southern border would alienate relations with Mexico, and a completely open border would alienate everyone else. That means he has to play both sides, make it look like they're trying, while winking at our neighbor to the south.
Patricia writes:
Jack, if on 9/11 the governors of the border states had declared a "state of emergency", had deployed their National Guard troops around the borders of their states with orders to turn back all people trying to cross the border illegally, we wouldn't have nearly the problem with illegals that we have now. We closed our borders when Pearl Harbor happened, why wouldn't we have believed we were being invaded on 9/11/01?
CJ from Roanoke, VA writes:
We need the cheap labor to further our decline into third world status by destroying the prevailing wages and draining our social services. There is no way to take the so-called terrorist threat serious when the borders are wide open. Also, the political climate of not wanting to offend anyone will prevent the border from being sealed up. The future for this country is bleak.
Steve from Idaho writes:
The same reason we ship our jobs to China and India. The same reason there was slavery in this country. Same reason we stopped shipping our jobs to Japan. The elite corporations embedded in Washington want immigrants to be able to cross the border. It’s called CHEAP LABOR Jack !! Bush and McCain will talk tough on immigration, but like Republicans from the past, there is amnesty on the horizon.