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What about Posse Comitatus?

What about Posse Comitatus? Posted by: Ynot at October 15, 2004 03:57 AM

I presume you’re referring to the restrictions on using military personnel to do civilian police work, and not to the group of whacko militia vigilantes.

I’m no legal expert but I think the military restrictions have been eased somewhat. For example, Coast Guard personnel are sometimes transported aboard Navy ships. The actual boarding of other vessels is done by the Coast Guard but the Navy gets them there and back.

Even though I have a lot of faith in our armed forces, I think I’d prefer to see the Border Patrol continue its expansion instead. To do that it will need more officers, more and better equipment, strengthened and improved barriers and more high-tech surveillance to slow the tide of illegals.

David, I do share your concern on this issue, even though I disagree with Korbach’s solution. Despite what some politicians would have us believe, this isn’t just about illegal immigrants; it’s about national security. We have to fix the problem and quickly.

David,
Although I’m not sure about using our military to man our borders, but I can not for the life of me figure out why Bush and the governors of NM,AZ, & Cal have not used the national gaurd to fill the need.

NOTOTH,
Your right about fixing the problem quickly. If every American knew just what it cost them, the problem would be fixed tommorrow. However, finding the exact number might be almost impossible due to the fact that so many factors and sources would have to be checked.

Henry, David, et al,
I will first admit that Americans find some jobs beneath us.
I work in field where I see countless illegals every day. The argument has been made that they only take jobs that no one else would take.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In the construction industry for instance I see drywallers, mudders, tapers, painters, stone workers, and even carpenters, that are not here legally. I don’t think that a man trying to support his family would find any of these jobs beneath him.
The problem is one of economics. The businessmen that hire these folks do so because they are a tremendous source of cheap, albeit unskilled, labor. On the other side of the coin there are skilled craftsmen that can’t find enough work to feed their families.
I live in a state, Arizona, where the flood of illegals has become an invasion. The Home Depots in Phoenix are ringed with illegals looking for day labor.
Their trip into this country is ardourus and extremely dangerous. Many imigrants lose their lives every year making this trip accross the deserts on the Arizona border. Yet they still come.
The fence put up by California hasn’t stopped the tide. The deserts of Arizona hasn’t stopped the tide.
Only when the jobs, and working environment back in their own countries gets better will we be able to stem the tide of illegals coming accross our borders.

Rocky, just as a practical matter, your recommendation for creating parity between Mexico wage/living standards and those of the U.S. will require either elevating Mexico’s wage/living standards to our level, lowering ours to theirs, some measure of each until parity is reached.

I don’t see that as a solution - nor does it do a single thing in the short term to address the potential influx of terrorists via our beaches, or wilderness Canadian/Mexican borders.

Korback is offering a two birds with one stone solution - which for all the fits and starts, is going to be the only real effective method of getting control over both problems.

Now what Korbach has not gotten around to yet, is once we have interdicted illegal traffic, what do we do with them. He is going to have to develop his plan further to the extent of establishing treaties or agreements or sanctions with our bordering nations which shifts the cost of interdiction on a per person basis back to the bordering nation through which the illegal intruded our borders. If he is elected, I would hope that Republicans and his constituents would have the wisdom to press him to shape the policy in just such a manner.

If the costs for border intrusions are shifted back to the neighboring country, it won’t be long before that country will find it cost effective to put in place measures of their own to stem the flow of illegal emmigration across our borders, as well.

Rocky, I know that the flood of illegals really hits certain states, including yours, especially hard. It’s a complicated issue as you point out and not one that’s going to be solved quickly enough for anyone.

But the bigger concern for me, as a “non-border state” resident, is the whole security issue. If illegal workers slip in and out of the US with near-impunity, how easy is it for terrorists to do the same thing at the same borders?

I just finished reading Tom Clancy’s novel The Teeth of the Tiger, which uses just that scenario. No, I’m not suggesting that we base our national security options on some novelist’s writings, but I know that Clancy does his homework and if this is even close to reality, we are very vulnerable.

Rocky,
While I have no problem with people wanting to be able to feed their family, I do have a problem with the demand of cheap labor dragging down the rest of the wages in the country.

Fixing the borders is not just about a fence, but we need to seriously look at how we deal with the solution. Granted the need for workers of unskilled labor is on the rise; however, that should be driven up the wages not undermining their growth.

As for slowing down the problem, I see it as a two fold approach. First, I would step up the fines for hiring illegals with a clause that allows the government to sieze equipment for repeat offenders. Second, I would revamp the immigration laws to reflect the real workforce need. On illegals already in country, I would put up a one week window where they can sign up at the top of the list after that anyone caught gets fined $50,000.00 for illegal alien and $100,000.00 per violation for the employers. Those heavy fines should take the profit out of hiring illegal aliens to take a below wage job.

Henry,
The fine thing has already been tried and was shouted down as racist. Requiring proof of citzenship likewise. We have tried cutting of benefits like schools and healthcare, also racist.

I don’t want to sound fatalistic here but, if we can’t stop groups of people, and I mean groups, twenty and sometimes thirty people, how are we going to stop one person on a mission?

David, in Texas, wasn’t there an incedent in the recent past where guardsmen at the border fired upon illegals?

Here in Arizona we have had sensor balloons monitoring the border. That hasn’t done much good.

I don’t have any suggestion but for sure and for certain someone needs to figure this out soon.

Borders are artificial things. They restrict freedom. The only secure border in recent memory was the Berlin Wall.

I am disturbed by the idea of turning the Mexican border into a Berlin wall. Am I the only one?

Smuggling has a long history in this country. Our forefathers were smugglers. What’s to prevent terrorist’s from using the Canadian border? Or the long coast’s?

It would be prohibitively expensive to secure any of our borders, and would only raise the cost of breaching them. A determined group or person can cross any border.

Preventing terrorism invloves alertness, surveillance,intelligence and removing the imeptus for the idealology. Sealing borders is a fantasy that I doubt can be be done in the real world.

Our special forces breach borders all the time. We couldn’t seal off Vietnam. I just don’t see how you can realistically or effectively do it.

Greg, JFK could not envision the technology that would put a man on the moon by the end of the decades either, but, we did it. What is needed is the concensus and determintation to get it done. If that decision is made, we will find or invent the technology to make it happen. We have done it before.

Before any solution can be viable we need to get over our abhorrence to offending anyone. Laws have passed in California to address the illegal problem, but as soon as they are voted in they are taken to court, where they languish.

David, I agree that a solution may be found someday, and I wouldn’t presume to say it wouldn’t be found, however, how much time and money are we going to invest in this venture.
The solution won’t be trotted out even tomorrow, and today is when we need the it.

Rocky, it is true that there isn’t any solution that could be implemented and become effective in a short period of time. But, it is a safe estimate we are going to be dealing with the threat of terrorist infiltration and the economic problems of pourous borders for at least 10 to 15 years or more. Therefore, I don’t see lack of immediate implementation being an excuse for not getting on the task as soon as possible.

Hey anything is possible. I’m all for it. Really.

Right now Tom Ridge is asking businesses to pick up the slack on the home security front. It seems that the government doesn’t have the money to implement the laws that Congress passed.

Rocky, why am I not surprised. Give ‘em another 4 years though, and they will bust through our national credit limit ceilings like a ferrari through tissue paper.

Keep voting them incumbents in, folks, they are good for what ails you, just don’t ask your kids to respect you when they have to pay income taxes. I see another ‘60’s coming when anyone over 35 is the enemy….

Perhaps I didn’t make my point.

I do not believe sealing our borders is the answer. I do not want America to become a Soviet style DDR.

Any determined terrorist who is willing to die can accomplish his goals, irregardless of the technology. Any technology can be defeated. It may slow things down, but nothing is inpenetrable. The only successfully isolated regimes are extremely repressive. Is that your goal?

Most of the world doesn’t hate America. Most Muslims aren’t psycopaths. Go after and kill those who are. Isolation from the world or punishing Mexicans seeking sustainence won’t make us safer.

Greg, argument has one flaw. Because setting up surveillance and intrusion response teams would not be full proof, we should not do it, makes no rational sense. Nothing in this life is fool proof, that doesn’t mean one should not try to improve a situation.

The solution I proposed last year is one of surveillance and response teams to activity. That system does not raise images of the Great Wall of China with sentries marching back and forth on top of it.

I think your argument is alarmist and unrealistic. We have the technology to create electronic pattern recognition surveillance that would raise alarms to strategically placed National Guard or a much enlarged Border Patrol response teams that would respond to intrusions.

Our society has a host of no pass barriers around our monuments, government buildings, military installations, etc, many of which could be removed or reduced if we put such no pass barriers 1 mile within our national borders, where pass trough permits would be required to encroach or cross such surveillance perimiters. Less than 1% of our national population would be affected by such measures, and those that are would simply have to adapt to new legal procedures for legitimate entry to those surveillance perimeters. Not a new concept or practice in America.

David,
Please understand that we both agree that something must be done. However we are talking about vast stretches of real estate. As I said before a surveillance station in southern Arizona is in operation. It is largely inefective.
What you are talking about here will cost 10’s if not 100’s of billions of dollars. Where do propose that this money come from, assuming that this gentleman gets elected?

Even if you seal off the mexican border, smuggling then moves to the Canadian Border.

When that becomes too difficult we several thousand miles of coast where boats are known to drop off drugs.

I don’t think sealing off borders is at all the answer. Frankly, I think that’s just a bit of hysteria that has swept our country and a bit xenophobic. The borders have been open for some time. As I recall, most of the terrists were here legally. Granted a lot more scrutiny is going on now. Going after terrorists and surveillance are good tactics. Attacking countries with little or no connection to terror is a poor tactic. Being an irresponsible Superpower is a bad tactic.

There are no guarantees in life. Freedom has costs. I think 911 should have awakened us to the fact that we are not insulated from the third world. It shouldn’t become a reason to try to create a womb to live in.

Rocky we have already spent 10’s of billions of dollars on Homeland Security and it is for all intents and purposes wasted money - we still have no defense of our homeland.

We had never landed a person on the moon before we decided that we would, either. Didn’t mean we couldn’t do it. This can be done. And if we want our children to feel safer than we do today in 10 years, we had better secure our borders.

And there is another issue. A great deal of Homeland Security efforts today hinge upon investigating, searching, and slowing down innocent, legal Americans. A border surveillance and protection system would focus our resources on primarily on those persons posing a real threat, instead of most of us who don’t. Seems a far more responsible and effective use of our tax dollars than searching the frequent flyer AVP of Microsoft 5 times a week as he flies around to meetings.

David I agree totaly, I have stopped flying, not because of fear, but because of the hassle.

In late 2001 it was nesscesary for me to fly into and out of John Wayne Airport in Orange County California. What I saw there appalled me. Young National Guardsmen and women with M-16’s!
I couldn’t belive it. I have to tell you, it didn’t make me feel safer.
On subsequent flights to other destinations up until last fall I saw grandmothers being searched, I saw businessmen in $1000 dollar suits being searched. This doesn’t make any sense. I was waiting for the day that they asked to do a cavity search, and I don’t mean my mouth.

Was it Goebels that said a frightened populace is very pliable? I could be wrong on the author. But you get my point.

Rocky, I’ve stopped flying for the same reason. I also do not feel particularly safe since I know checked luggage is not checked.

I value my privacy, and now prefer driving. I feel uncomfortable being eyeballed and scrutinized just for trying to save a little time. If this country becomes too crazy, maybe it will be time to find somewhere a little freer.

Amen to that.