I hadn't been following this thread, so I'm glad pdq spoke up for me and noted that I favor completely open borders. Border enforcement just isn't working - and I say this after 25 years of investigating employees of the Border Patrol and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and visiting countless INS and Borter Patrol facilities and detention centers. It doesn't seem to work well anywhere in the world. The boundaries of nations are too vast to allow for any effective control. The only really effective border controls have to be on the level of the Berlin Wall. The United States held the Berlin Wall up as a symbol of oppression for so long - and now we want to build our very own Berlin Wall to protect our wealth from jobless Mexicans.

Like it or not, we have a global economy. Goods pass almost as easily from nation to nation, as they do from city to city within a country. In general, goods go where there's a demand for them. Certainly, we have to have some controls on goods to ensure product safety - but we don't build walls to keep goods out. Workers are also part of our global economy - and no matter how hard we try to control them, they will go where there is a demand. Maybe we need to find economic measures to direct a reasonable flow of goods and workers, instead of resorting to the repressive, ineffective, and wasteful restriction and enforcement tactics we use now.

But what I really wanted to talk about was teminology. I'd like to Big Mick's uneasiness about the term "Homeland Security" - it seems to me that there's something wrong with the philosophy behind that term. Most of the "homeland security" functions were performed by the Department of Justice until the formation of this separate "Department of Homeland Security," and the Department of Justice seems to be the logical place for these functions. Now, I will readily admit that Justice has not always beeen Just in its activities, but there is a philosophical undertone that implies that the Department of Justice is supposed to both enforce and follow the law, and that it is obliged to adhere to the Bill of Rights. The Department of Justice has always been closely tied to the courts, and has often been restricted by those courts. The establishment of the Department of Homeland Security give the implication that our internal security is somehow more important than the Bill of Rights and should be beyond the control of the courts. Oh, no, it's not a complete denial of the courts or the Bill of Rights - but the Homeland Security act and especially the "USA Patriot Act" (another term I hate) are certainly a move away from the controls set by the Constitution.

And Kendall, I see you don't like the term "undocumented worker" instead of "illegal alien." I guess I don't like either term, because both have an unfortunate "spin" to them. The first is patronizingly euphemistic. The second has a hateful undertone to it. Both of them change people into objects. They're just people - some are bad, and some are good - but the fact of the matter is that they need to survive and will do whatever they need to do to survive.

So, I think we need to do radical rethinking of the issue of immigration, and we need to come up with a solution that doesn't keep pouring money down the drain into impossible enforcement efforts. Same with healthcare - we're wasting money, trying to avoid paying for healthcare that people need. Same with a lot of other things - we need to rethink things. And if we do, I think we can provide for the needs of people at a far lower cost than we expend keeping them away from jobs and healthcare and education and whatnot.

If we can't serve the needy of the world out of a sense of justice, perhaps we can do it out of self-interest. If we provide people with their basic needs, wherever they are in the world, we will help them become assets instead of drains on our global economy. Instead of wasting money protecting ourselves from problems by enforcement, we need to do some radical rethinking and actually solve the problems. It's not only just - it makes good economic sense. Instead of spending all this money protecting the wasteful status quo, we need to fix what's wrong with our world.

-Joe Offer-