Good Fences Make Good Neighbors 3

Looks like some lawmakers have been reading my blog and are now echoing my call for the creation of a American-Mexican Good Neighbor Wall.

A once-radical idea to build a 2,000-mile steel-and-wire fence on the U.S.-Mexican border is gaining momentum amid warnings that terrorists can easily sneak into the country. ...

“You have to be able to enforce your borders,” says California Rep. Duncan Hunter, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. He's proposing a fence from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas. “It's no longer just an immigration issue. It's now a national security issue.” ...

Fencing the border, originally proposed in the debate over how to stop illegal immigration, is controversial. The Bush administration argues that a Berlin Wall-style barrier would be a huge waste of money — costing up to $8 billion.

Oh please, Congress can waste that kind of money without blinking. Plus, California alone spends $10 billion annually on services for illegal aliens. Spending $8 billion on a fence would save an enormous amount of money in the long run.

Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar says it makes more sense to use a mix of additional agents, better surveillance and tougher enforcement of immigration laws — and fences.

But Hunter points to the experience in San Diego, where the number of illegal migrants arrested is one-sixth of what it was before the fence was built.

“People have made stupid editorial comments about the Great Wall of China,” he says, “but the only thing that has worked is that fence.”

If you build it, they won't come.