How much would a border fence cost? Would $182,000,000 be a good start?

No, it wouldn't. Because they wouldn't be considered a civilian. They'd be breaking into a secure country.

 

So then the Nazis violated no law when they gunned down Jews in Europe? After all, their government sanctioned it, right?

Government sanctioned =/= legal. Watergate was government sanctioned.

 

We can do a quick cost calculation, too.

Here's the U.S. Army's 2015 budget request:
http://asafm.army.mil/Documents/OfficeDocuments/Budget/budgetmaterials/fy15/opmaint//oma-v1.pdf

In 2015, the U.S. Army requested $33 billion for operations and maintenance (Page 1).

That covers everything needed to directly support the operations and maintenance of 32 Brigade Combat Teams (Page 47) -- the actual combat units of the Army.

3 brigades roughly equal a division, so that adds up to 11 divisions, more or less.

Thus, as a back-of-the-envelop calcuation, we would need to spend $156 BILLION PER YEAR to maintain 52 division-equivalents on the border.

That only makes sense if you're innumerate, never mind the difficulty in finding and training enough soldiers for that duty, the degradation of actual combat ability in a unit relegated to border patrol, concerns about such a high level of military presence in the domestic United States, etc.

 

The nazis invaded other countries. Placing land mines in our OWN country is not illegal. IT WOULD BE GOVERNMENT SANCTIONED. Why are you not grasping this? Lol I can't believe you just made such an irrelevant comparison.

You lost this debate. Move on.

 

Of course, political parties want demographics to favor their ideas or lack of them. Employer's in general ARE Republican, but want cheap labor and millions of ordinary households have used illegal 's to do common jobs around their home.

What's been going on for decades is the lack of enforcement and the "blame game" for why it's not done. Cut off free education, healthcare or other added benefits that have happened in the past 20 years and that cheap labor would go back to work permits, where workers simply came and went according to demands. After Eisenhower's "Operation Wetback" in the 50's, this worked just fine for everyone, until the benefits later involved everyone. By the way "Sanctuary Towns" are illegal in themselves and no one seems to care.

 

By the way, a frontage of 60km comes out to roughly 1 soldier every 33 meters. If you really wanted a frontage with more reasonable closeness of soldiers, say 30km or 15km, you'd need 100 divisions or 150 divisions respectively.

 

Though not a signatory to the Ottawa Protocol on landmines, we respect its provisions almost entirely -- the only reason we haven't signed it is that we reserve the right to have landmines on the North Korea / South Korea border.

Specifically, current executive orders prohibit the use of landmines outside of Korea:
http://www.state.gov/t/pm/wra/c11735.htm

Regarding .50 cals, you can certainly place a .50-cal at the border -- but using it against civilians violates the Geneva Accords.

 

We invaded Mexican land and established a new border on their land. If we start gunning down unarmed civilians trying to cross the border, then we will be no different than the Nazis.

 

Well, a division is never lined up shoulder to shoulder or anything like that. You'll usually have small units separated by unoccupied space, but covering it all with observation and lines of fire, and occasionally sending out patrols for some ground-truthing.

And you also have to think about depth. A division typically puts two brigades in the line and holds one in reserve, and those brigades hold an area several kilometers deep, not just a thin front line.

The actual frontage covered by a division under ideal conditions depends on the mission requirement at hand. If the entire division were broken down into dispersed patrols, you could theoretically cover a lot of ground at the expense of concentrated combat power. But in practice that's less feasible than you'd think, and having a division do that day in, day out for years would render it basically useless for combat. Which is one reason the military wants no part of such a scheme. It would ruin good soldiers and good units.

 

I understand that. 33m separation is with factoring every brigade keeping one of its battalions off the front for troops to rotate for R&R, training, ETS/change of unit/influx of replacements.

Also, let's consider the fact that the vast majority of the US army might be mechanized infantry divisions, but those divisions also include armored brigades which cannot effectively cover the same kind of front. We'd have to rearm and retrain huge portions of the military.

 

Your beloved fuhrer just offered businesses a $3,000 incentive to hire the illegals.

Seems you and your leader and your type are part of the big problem...among other things.

 

As if staying past the visa expiration...thereby making them here illegally, somehow changes things?

Build the fence (the one that was agreed to by the dems and funded), and send the ones here illegally back where they came from.

 

And fine Mexico for every individual they allow to pass through their borders to get here. They're allowed to lock away US tourists in jail and extort us, while they happily tell their citizens to walk right over. ^&#*@(@( Mexico....except their food=)

 

The fact neither of those common sense and logical plans of attack are even included in either sides plan to fix immigration proves that neither side is seriously contending the illegal trespassing that is taking place. AND nobody is going to want to hire legal citizens so the need for replacement slave labor workers is on the horizon. Nothing will be 'fixed' and the 'new' wave, will continue.

 

I strive to find the marajuana that you have come in contact with.

By the way, I just spent a long time looking up this debate. Seems it's a non issue. There are no laws that state we cannot secure our border and put landmines on our land. If the government wants to do it to on our own soil, they can.

- - - Updated - - -

Your last bit is incorrect if we considered mexicans crossing our border, enemy combatants. You can bet that if we needed to put landmines down, at that point they'd already be considered combatants. Therefore, zero laws will have been broken.

 

3100 km border. 30 drones, at a few thousand feet, with thermal imaging, could watch the entire border easily. We have thousands sitting around not being used, with thousands of veterans without jobs who know how to operate them.

Have a few helicopters on standby that can be at any point on the border within an hour, and you just secured the border for less than it cost us to provide board games for illegals for four months.

Ta Da!

 

Yeah, I think the frontage is reasonable. Just noting that it's not as simple as some people think.

The "two up, one back" formation is typically repeated at lower echelons, kind of like a fractal. Division: two brigades up, one back. Brigade: Two battalions up, one back. Battalion: Two companies up, one back, etc. Every commander likes a reserve.

So if you do the math, a division is usually holding the front line with just four battalions, each with just two companies in the front line, each with just two platoons in the front line. Which works out to a front line held, at the platoon level, by 16 platoons (if I did the math right). That's about 640 soldiers actually on the very front line -- and only a fraction of them are actively patrolling/watching/whatever at any given time.

Sorry about the ex-Army geekout...

Rather than retrain and reequip our mech and armored divisions, it would probably be easier and less harmful to national security to create 52 new light infantry divisions. Tanks, APCs and artillery aren't much use when chasing down illegal border crossers anyway.

Overall, though, it's a terrible idea. Besides the horrific cost, there's the fact that for the military to be effective you'd have to be willing to have them shoot civilians who ignore orders to stop. And that opens an entire can of worms we don't want to open.

Which is why policing the border against unwanted civilians is and should be a POLICE function, not a military function.

 

Wow. So simple! I wonder why the people actually patrolling the border haven't thought of that!

Probably because it's actually NOT that simple.

 

Yes clearly we should not value human life

 

Good luck convincing any sane, rational person that a bunch of unarmed, non-violent people crossing a border to find work in a different country are "enemy combatants". What the (*)(*)(*)(*) is wrong with people? Why do you want to kill a bunch of civilians? Why are you in the Army if you want to kill unarmed people? If anything you should be discharged before you hurt someone.

 

Before you get any more butthurt, you need to go back and reread the conversation, genius. This was all hypothetical and I even said I don't believe in it.
#facepalm

 

And also, please don't attack my service record because you lacked the ability to read the entire conversation. Had you done so, you'd see we're arguing about laws regarding land mines. No one in this conversation actually wants them.

Once again, please re-read, learn the conversation, and then make a comment. Thank you.

 

I wonder why people would rather spend an enormous amount of money to build a fence when all we'd need to do is throw the CEO's of companies employing undocumented workers into prison for five or ten years. All it would ever take is for a few agribusiness heavyweights to spend a few years as some convict's prison wife and the problem would be solved. People who come to America from the countries to the south do so for one and only one reason: to get work. If there were no work for them, they would stay home.

 

Thank god. I thought things had fallen pretty damn low because there's no way in hell we would have tolorated someone with that attitude in the units I was with.

 

Yes. I made a hypothetical statement, and the Questerr made up laws that didn't exist, and i was merely arguing the laws he made up. I was not supporting any idea of actually putting mines down.

The beginning statement that started this was a joke I made. Then Questerr took it seriously and I argued the laws he failed to cite.