San Diego city beat's worthwhile appraisal of Duncan Hunter

[MnFats]

www.sd.citybeat.com


Those of you still taking Duncan Hunter seriously can finally stop, because it should be completely clear now that the congressman is off his nut. Hunter’s lunacy was confirmed via his recommendation that the entire U.S.-Mexico border—from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico—be sealed with a tall fence to keep all those job-stealing, driver’s-license-wanting, resource-using, foreign-language-speaking Mexicans out.

If not insanity, Hunter suffers from a severe case of reality detachment. He’s stuck in the thinking that there’s actually a point at which people who need work can actually be cut off from entering the country to get it. Go ahead, keep building the fence higher and wider; they’ll go farther and climb higher to get around or over it. That’s the thing with people and jobs: you can’t keep them apart.

Meanwhile, you’ll spend billions in another failed effort to lock the country down.

You’d think a conservative like Hunter would understand supply and demand. Does this guy have a brother in the fence-building industry? Even the anti-immigrant Union-Tribune said Hunter’s idea is folly.

Hunter’s in league with people like Tom DeLay, fringe right-wingers who don’t understand that immigration policy requires a balanced approach. It won’t work unless you devise a reform package that finds a safe, legal way for these folks to get into the country, connect with employers, pay taxes and become productive members of American society. Short of that, they’re still going to come, and they’re still going to work. They’re just going to do it in the dark shadows of illegality. Why? Because they desperately need the work, and the employers desperately need the workers. There’s no way around it. What you have then is Latin Americans paying far too much money to unscrupulous smugglers to find a way in—speeding across the border on the wrong side of the freeway; stuffed into cramped compartments in cars and trucks; trudging across the burning desert. Yeah, they’re literally dying to get the work, to be reunited with family.

[fooj]

1. This guy's a dangerous loon!

Peace.

[rodeodance]

3. i heard somewhere this fence would cost over 20 BILLION $$$$

[librechik]

2. the politically insane are as dangerous as the religiously insane

here's a few lunatics: Tom Coburn, Zell Miller, Frist, Delay, Rohrabacher--I could go on and on. Hunter is one of those guys.

His only saving grace is he doesn't wave the cross around too, like some.

[Timmy5835]

4. Why not make it illegal to hire

Why build a fence when if you made it illegal to hire an illegal that would basically solve the problem. But the GOP doesen't really want to solve the problem. It's a great campaign issue.