"My own theory for why we haven’t had terrorist spectaculars launched across the U.S. Mexico border: Even al-Qaeda is afraid of Juarez these days."

Related: the strip clubs there are probably too dangerous for al-Qaeda to enjoy.

A more likely possibility: Mexico is willing to help keep the Muslim terrorists out so that its own invasion can proceed according to schedule.

The longer that no serious action is taken to staunch the flow of illegal immigrants into the US, the more I am convinced that Congress' unwillingness to secure the border must stem from something deeper than Democrats' desire for votes from illiterate, uneducated welfare recipients from Mexico and Republicans' fear of taking away the illegal profits of the agro businesses and small-time, sleazy restaurant and landscaping business owners.

There are 15 million illegals from Mexico, and yet you see more on the news about the way that jobs are found and indentured servitude demanded of the relatively tiny number of illegal immigrants from China. It's clear that restaurants that hire exclusively illegals (how's that for equal opportunity!) are not simply hiring people off the street, but are the end users of a sophisticated illegal labor market where coyotes and cartels send workers to restaurants in need of illegal labor. The fact that Congress doesn't seem to have ever investigated this, or the media to have covered it, leads one to wonder what sort of high-placed individuals know about, and fear imperiling, that system.

At the end of the day, it would be so easy, and so cheap, to build a fence, to mandate E-Verify, and to bust the illegal labor markets. Congress does none of this for a reason, and that reason, whatever it is, is a slap in the face of every American.

I don't see it is a question of efficiency; as a question of the relative advantages of spending money on X *versus* Y. Rather to me it is the failure to do X (secure the borders) undermining the justification for doing Y (the Iraq & Afghan Wars, the Patriot Act, etc.).

George W. Bush tried to justify an awful lot of things by claiming they were necessary to secure this country from terrorism. One thing he never did, however, was ask his Chamber of Commerce pals to sacrifice one iota. Feeling up every 85-year-old grandmother from Tulsa was considered acceptable; disallowing the control of US ports by the government of Dubai was not; securing our borders against illegal immigration was not.

Shortly before the Iraq War began I seriously considered joining the National Guard with the understanding (the hope, even) that I might be deployed to a war zone. I calculated a significant financial cost for myself just for the training alone. But that isn't what stopped me. I wouyld've been happy to make such a sacrifice. What did stop me was the growing realization that I would be sacrificing financially and bodily for a country that the Bush/Neocon/Wall Street Urinal crowd no longer considered to be mine, but thought of as one giant Middle Eastern Bazaar. Bush's pre-9/11 attempt at amnesty had already upset me. Then, at the same time I was considering the Guard, I moved to an office that was around the corner from a medical clinic, subsidized by my insurer, that was primarily for the benefit of Hispanic illegals. Then, as a final straw, my car was totalled by an uninsured Mexican illegal.

When George W. Bush came into office his first major act was a tax cut that benefitted primarily the rich and that caused our deficit to soar, and his next major act would've been an amnesty for illegal immigrants - both were acts calculated to benefit big business and the wealthy . Thinking across 8 years of the miserable Bush II Era, there is not a single major initiative that social conservatives (religious or non-religious) can point to that Bush even tried to pass. Not one. I am done with such Republicans. I have and will vote for Democrats before I will vote for them.

WJ-Anger management son. You got issues. Lots of VN era draft ahem avoiders (Cheney, Lott, Gingrich among them) repent ever so mildly dodging the man-up test of their time. Don't fret over it, there were lots of young men - and women - who signed up in your stead.

JasonC:

In a world of finite resources, all such decisions are tradeoffs.

Kevin, you need to talk to a fellow by the name of Mark Krikorian. He will tell you how a border fence would pay for itself many times over, in form of lower spending on Mediaid, public schools, prisons, and just about everything else. The reason it hasn't been built isn't cost.

I would like to see a fence with a mine field on our side of the border. Otherwise, a 10-foot fence is vulnerable to a 12-foot ladder. Some people won't take such boundary markers seriously until someone dies. Post it as a danger zone, of courses, in English, Spanish, and Arabic. I wish I could think of an alternative to killing people, but I can't -- someone else solve the ladder problem, please.

rimfrel, mine fields are overkill. Singapore-style prison terms for illegal aliens and employers of such would work just fine as a deterrent measure. Here's the schedule of penalties:

"Illegal immigrants face penalties of up to six months in prison and three strokes of a rattan cane. Employers who hire illegal immigrants face two years in jail, fines of up to S$6,000 ($US1=S$1.6) and possible caning. In March 1998, judges reportedly increased the standard penalty on illegal immigrants to between four and six weeks imprisonment and between four and six strokes of the cane. The maximum penalty for entering Singapore illegally is six months jail and 12 strokes of the cane."