Securing the Border

Op-Ed

Straight Talk With Sam

Securing the Border

In the national news last week there was an article about how the "virtual fence" along the U.S.-Mexico border did not work as planned. This technical problem will delay the completion of the first phase of securing the border by three years. More taxpayer money will be spent to make the "virtual fence" work.

As a farmer, I have a lot of experience with fences. It would seem to me that the best way to secure the border would be with an actual fence rather than a "virtual fence." Where we have built fences along the border, we have seen results. It gives authorities a barrier to patrol and forces bottlenecks along the border.

In 2006, Congress passed legislation calling for 700 miles of fencing along the southern border. The Department of Homeland Security reports that it will have 370 miles of actual fencing completed by 2008. That is unacceptable.
The first step to solving illegal immigration is securing the border. By the end of 2008, we will have doubled the number of Border Patrol agents on the border since I came to Congress. However, that is not enough.

I support an actual physical barrier across the almost 2,000 miles of the southern border. We have thousands of miles of walls along our interstates in this country to control traffic noise. Surely we can do the same thing along our border.

It is time for the bureaucrats in Washington to scrap their "virtual fence" plans and get busy building an actual fence.

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