What Is So Difficult To Understand?

One Iowa Congressman took a recent trip to the border -- and not via Taco Bell either.

Congressman Steve King has just returned from a five-day trip to Arizona's border with Mexico. "It was a real eye-opener," King says. "One cannot get a feel for this without going down there and being in it."

King has been advocating construction of a fence along the U.S./Mexico border, and King says the drug trade he witnessed just reaffirmed his belief that a fence is what it will take to stop the flood of immigrants crossing the border.

"This is my second trip down to the border but this is the one that I learned the most at and the one that really causes me to take a look at this and see it from a different perspective on how many people are coming across the border illegally and how many drugs are a part of that," King says.

King was the only member of congress on this trip. He went with a "security detail" to meet with border patrol agents, some retired agents, and a group of fewer than two dozen Native Americans called the Shadow Wolves who are intercepting more drugs than the two-thousand border patrol agents in the area.

When King was at the reservation one night, the Shadow Wolves caught a gang member with 180 pounds of marijuana hidden in his pick-up.

It would appear that Congressman King actually took the time to see what needs to be seen.

King says a concrete fence must be built along the whole length of the U.S./Mexico border because his trip made him realize the number of border crossings are "far greater in number" than he thought, and the level of violence and the drug trade is much higher, too.

To those in his own Republican party who say the U.S. is not a country that builds walls but is a country that tears them down, King offers this response. "There is a 180 degree difference between a wall that's built to keep people in, which the Berlin Wall was, and a wall that's built to keep people out, which this would be," King says.

"It's entirely moral to defend yourself from people who are pouring over your borders, that don't have respect for our sovereignty and who are brining billions of dollars of drugs into the United States."

There's a national wildlife refuge in the area of Arizona King visited, and he says a fence worked there to protect the endangered "lesser long-nosed bat." That species of bat lives in only four caves in the world, one of which illegal immigrants crossing the border in Arizona used as a hiding place.

The bats left, according to King, so the National Park Service built a wrought-iron fence around the cave's entrance. King says the winged creatures moved back in the cave once the illegal immigrants were kept out.

"A fence does work," King says. "It worked to keep the illegals out of the bat cave." King says he spent about two days traveling to and from Arizona and about three days along what he estimates was about 450 miles of border.

King says he went in sort of "undercover" fashion so he'd get the real story, not the sanitized version delivered to members of congress who climb into helicopters and fly over the area.

So what would work? One point? Two points? Three points?

How about THESE points?

THE BZ BORDER SOLUTION:

• Secure the southern and northern borders of the United States in any physical, logistical and human fashion necessary;
• Use ALL available INS and Border Patrol sources available and then National Guard and then strictly military forces only if necessary in terms of personnel;
• Rely on human USBP interdiction first and then construct techno-fences, with physical fences only if absolutely necessary as a last resort -- physical fences are too easily breached;
• At the same time develop and implement a new national SSN card which resists theft;
• Require all states to verify each and every voter during every election to be a lawful resident;
• Require all states to comply with English-Only teaching programs;
• Require all states to audit, identify and then penalize all employers who utilize illegal immigrants in any form;
• Completely halt ALL legal immigration for the next two years, in order to digest, record and then implement the above mandates;
• Create and then share immigration databases with all affected federal, state and local agencies;
• Create a "Temporary Guest Worker Program" which allows a maximum stay of two years;
• No amnesty for anyone. PERIOD.

Without any one of the above sections in place, our country is doomed to failure.

What do YOU think?

BZ