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Charlie Reich

St. Augustine

Lots of talk going on in D.C. regarding building a fence across our southern border to keep out illegal immigrants. The word is we have 12 million or so illegal immigrants living in the U.S. who walked across our border. Thats about 7 percent of our population.

Now we are going to build a multi-billion dollar fence to keep them out. This dream comes at a time when we have a short-term debt of a $1 trillion-plus catchall spending bill covering the rest of the fiscal year that must be paid by Sept. 30 in order to avoid a government shutdown.

This emergency appropriation will throw our national long-term debt to over $21 trillion, and those on both sides of the fence on Capitol Hill are finally starting to worry about how we can start paying down this debt rather than keep adding another $1 trillion every year.

The Department of Homeland Security has estimated the wall will cost nearly $22 billion. But Democrats have said the price tag could be as high as $70 billion. Oh well, whats a few (?) billion dollar difference between friend? Its only taxpayer money, anyway.

And now we hear of forthcoming tax cuts for the rich, and some companies. Were already minus $1 trillion every year and now were going to give tax cuts to the wealthy people and Industries? Who makes up the difference? What are they smoking up in D.C.?

Those folks that walked over the border have secured jobs that most of us dont want to do in on farms, ranches and in industries that require back-breaking hard work much of it outdoors in all kinds of (increasingly hot) weather. (That increase in hot weather is another unspoken D.C. subject, while we continue to turn down our AC and watch the icecaps melt). The fact is we need these industrious, hard-working immigrants. Theyve established their families here, pay taxes and are educating their children to become future citizens and taxpayers in the U.S.

The government says the mission of the Department of Defense is to provide the military forces needed to deter war and to protect the security of our country. The departments headquarters is at the Pentagon.

If the idea is to protect the security of our country, why didnt it secure our southern border and prevent 12 million immigrants from invading our shores? Maybe they were too busy invading other peoples borders in the name of wars we couldnt win like Korea, Vietnam plus a few others I missed.

And we have The United States Department of Homeland Security a Cabinet department of the government, with responsibilities in public security roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries.

Its stated mission involves anti-terrorism, border security, immigration and customs, cyber-security and disaster prevention and management. It was created in response to the 9-11 attacks and is also currently the youngest Cabinet department.

Again: whose border security is it securing?

We have these two multi-faceted departments with thousands of military under their supervision. Why arent they protecting our southern border? Establish small military bases along that area and provide 24-hour patrols.

When illegals are caught, give them a meal, a bottle of water and immediately transport them back across the border to Mexico. Procure an agreement with Mexico for its military to accept them back from U.S. when caught, and arrange transportation back to their homes.

Dont lock them up in a jail awaiting a bus to take them back to a border station or whatever long-term expensive transfer process is currently being used.

And dont spend billions of dollars more shipping those back that are already here. Let them work off a future citizenship.

We dont need De-fence. We need defense by those departments we taxpayers pay them to do!

Go here to see the original:
Illegal immigration: Use defense, not 'de fence' - St. Augustine Record