The President's speech about controlling the border...

One of my favorite bloggers - Jerry Pournelle, who is also an excellent scifi writer - has a very well-thought out "take" on the immigration situation and some specific ideas:

Not enough enforcement, and not quick enough. The United States is being invaded. It is not a violation of the posse comitatus act to use the military to repel invasions. We do not need more people with no skills, no education, and who do not speak English, to come in to compete for entry level jobs. A "Guest Worker" program should at least require some skills and the ability to speak English. Six thousand National Guards will not be enough......

..... I do not believe that we can assimilate the number of illegal immigrants we already have. The legal immigration program already admits too many people at the bottom end of society if you count families: elders imported to be on Social Security because the Old Country doesn't have decent pensions. And so forth. Add to that the illegal immigrants and the very character of the American Experiment in Self Government is at stake.....

..... The American Melting Pot model of assimilation to a single language, and a wide-based Judao-Christian ethical and religious culture, might be able to endure nationalization. Might. That would be an interesting experiment. But it is 100% certain that the Melting Pot cannot handle great dilution, and that it takes time for it to work. Adding tens of millions of illegals plus larger numbers of legal immigrants will destroy the model and force our national democracy into the typical defects of a large national democracy, and thus to extinction. This is about as certain as anything we know about history.
Apparently no one in Washington understands this.

If they did, they would close the borders NOW, not in 2008.

As to how, it's simple: call it 2000 miles of border. At $1 million per mile that is $2 billion/year, a drop in the Budget. Hand that money on a per/mile basis to each border county sheriff, with provision that it must be spent on border control -- apprehension and confinement. Now hand every border city $20 million a year for the same purposes. Hand each Border State $50 million a year, again solely for border enforcement. The whole program will cost less than the illegals cost us now. And yes, there are details to be worked out, including rewards for performance and penalties for non-performance, and I took the numbers out of the top of my head; but it would work a lot better than sending 6,000 Guardsmen down to the border for TWO WEEK SHIFTS. The present plan will do nothing. It won't even LOOK as if it is doing something, which is its only purpose anyway.

Close the border now. Deport all illegals who come to the attention of the police courts. Insist that any legalization program includes instruction in English, Civics, American History, and such, and have a zero tolerance policy regarding crime including DUI, speeding tickets, driving without a license, drunk and disorderly... IN other words, deport those who volunteer for deportation. And hope that we can assimilate the rest. And do that NOW.

Apparently no one in Washington understands what is at stake.

Well said .....