"It's disturbing that, in the name of national security, a great country like the U.S. will basically force poor migrants into the desert where they will die or be at the mercy of extremely unscrupulous human smugglers," says Timothy Edgar, the national security policy counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union.

I appreciate the empathy here, but c'mon. Timothy Edgar has the audacity to claim that the U.S. is forcing migrants to illegally cross into this country and thus to their deaths. We in the U.S. are killing those illegals by making it too treacherous! Have mercy! Perhaps we should send some air conditioned Greyhounds over to Tijuana to pick them up and drop them off at the orchards.

I consider myself fairly liberal, mostly independent, but I still believe we have laws and borders for a good reason. It doesn't matter if illegals aren't terrorists. We don't have to put up with the attitude of "Oh well, they aren't really bothering anybody, so what can you do?" Republicans are split on this issue as I believe Democrats are. Some Republicans want to keep the flow of cheap, unprotected labor coming, I'm sure they would rather businesses be able to treat all employees like dirt while some Repubs are Xenophobes. Democrats are torn between empathy for a poor and oppressed people just struggling to survive and between the feeling that the current situation is out of control and unfair to law abiding immigrants and potential immigrants.

The environmental issues in this article should be addressed. Tossing in a legal loophole to allow Homeland Security to steamroll the public is typical of the current administration (motto: we are the party of order and democracy, except when we want to do something). But touchy feely comments like the one above are just fodder for the Repubs to make Dems and liberals seem pathetic and weak.

I am a research professor at an institute on the coast a couple of miles south of the border. I have lived and worked in the area for the last past 12 years. I drive along the border through Smugglers Gulch several time each week.

The fact is illegal border crossing in the coastal zone is almost non-existant. Crossers are blocked by very large houses lined up along the border in the Playas de Tijuana neighborhood. Immediately beyond those houses are very steep and trecherous hills which are almost completely impassable. Smugglers gulch itself forms a natrual choke-point between those hills, and another group of dangerous hills to the east. Anyone who tries to cross here not only faces the border patrol, but the swamps to the north, which during the rainy months are even more dangerous.

Before 1996-97 crowds of people would gather at the border every day. It was a major traffic hazard; there was even a makeshift store selling food and drinks to the crossers. Now the area is almost completely deserted.

The coastal zone barriers are just another wasteful government boondoggle--a policy driven not by practicality or necessity, but by paranoia. Duncan Hunter can claim that he brought jobs for his constituents and placate their irrational fears about terrorists crossing the border. The real danger is not terrorists crossing the border, but terrorists attacking the border. I wonder if these crooked politicians are doing anything about that?

The fading Republican base in Southern California blames illegal immigration for its woes. Duke Cunningham didn't need to lose an election to lose his seat, but others like B1 Bob Dornan complained bitterly after he lost his seat in Orange County, that illegals were stealing the vote. (Did they bring their own Diebold machines?). No, better to make them cross over in Arizona or somewhere else. This is a decision made during Bush's Veterans day visit, Chertoff made it official a few days later. The fence is all about politics, and holding on to power while the shifting tide of demographics moves against you. It's also about money, and paying your respects to those who diverted, and laundered lucrative defense contracts into Republican campaign funds. One suspects the plan was to siphon off more, while erecting a fence that would keep left leaning hispanics from entering the country to vote illegally. The fence represents the extremes in schizoid delusions, and corruption that defines the Republican party.