Do we really need secure borders?

It is said that one of the requirements of a  nation is its ability to control its own borders.

Some countries, such as the old East Germany, North Korea, or just the old Soviet Union, had borders set up to keep their citizens from escaping.  Some countries might only worry about the border as a demarcation between their neighbors, while others wish to enforce their borders as a way to keep their national identity from being diluted by the cultures that immigrants will bring into their borders.

For sure, the United States is a country of immigrants, as with the exception of the Native Americans, this country was settled by people from other countries.  When the settlers from Europe arrived they found a good portion of the landscape populated by various tribes, with their own cultures, who would slowly find themselves pushed west, or put into reservations.  historically this is tragic but it was basically a result of not being able to control, or even have, borders.

Over a period of time the United States started to take notice of the influx of new citizens and established ports of entry through which new arrivals could legally enter the country.

We have had immigration laws since just after the government was formed.  These laws covered not only who could enter the country but who could be a citizen, or naturalized.

There are a number of reasons that we would wish to secure our borders:

  • Illegal aliens who come into the country for better jobs, or to escape oppression in their own country.  Many of them are desperate, and so they do not bother with the legal stuff.  Kind of like the guy who is hungry and so he breaks the window at your house and then sits down at the table with you as if he expects you to feed him.  Many of these people have been known to bring drugs across the border, they don’t have papers to prove their residence and so they can not legally obtain jobs.  This last bit would require the use of fraudulent identity papers, or, as some people would call it, IDENTITY THEFT.
  • Don’t forget the drug smugglers.
  • This you have a terrorist who just wants to kill us. Though I have not really seen much about terrorist getting in this way, as they seem to use visitor visas.
  • We also have to be alert for the smuggling of so-called “dirty bombs”.


The point here is that WE DO have laws covering how people can gain entry to the United States, and how we enforce those laws shows the type of commitment we have to be a sovereign nation.

Here comes the really fun part.  How do you enforce your laws?  That would depend on how much you value being able to control your own borders.  The way I see it there are two main points of control, border security, things like walls or even alligator filled moats, and internal security, this being ways to verify that people getting jobs are legally eligible to have those jobs.

One of the ways to verify the person’s eligibility for employment is called e-verify.  This is, as far as I understand it, a way to connect all of a person’s document in such a way that their identity and nationality can be verified.  President Trump only stated to use it in 2018 after several of the “fake news” organizations reported that he, or his companies, were hiring undocumented workers, read that illegal immigrant.  Doing this earlier, and without the impression that he was being forced to do so, would have lent more believability to his urgency about building a wall.

Any measure that is undertaken, be it a wall or an electronic verification process, is subject to an old security adage “no security plan is perfect”.  Given enough time and effort and security system can be bypassed.

The most you can hope to accomplish with security is to keep the honest person honest, make the time and effort they put into subverting that system more trouble than its worth or make them take enough time doing it that they are detected and apprehended.

Yes, if the democrats were to cooperate in national security, we could build a wall, do the verify thing and cut down on the number of illegal aliens who will help us bankrupt the social security system but, what does it really matter

There was a recent report, an analysis of the census data, that gave a timeframe of 20 to 30 years before Hispanics outnumber whites and blacks.  The question then is : will they have grown up as part of the American identity, or will the be like a couple of our new Congresswomen who have shown us they know nothing, or little, about the way this country works.

Who knows.  In 30 to 50 years from now, this country could be another 3rd rate Latin American country with Nukes.


That Joe Guy.







Spammers go away.







That Joe Guy.

Red White and Blue..

I was reading about the trouble that President Trump recently had while coloring a U. S. Flag, while he was visiting some school children.

In one picture there is a puzzled looking Trump staring at the drawing of the other children and seeing that something was wrong.

Some have suggested that he was confused and trying to color the Russian flag.  I don’t know about that but, I kind of wonder how he did not know what the flag he wrapped himself in looks like.  After all, all he really had to do was look down at the little lapel pin he so proudly wears to see what it looks like.

It might be a good thing that his show was “The Apprentice” rather than “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader”.



That Joe Guy.


Why I think firing the Special Prosecuter would be a bad idea..

On my first thought, I decided that this was a rather straightforward idea: if you have nothing to fear why go through all the trouble to make yourself look guilty?

Anybody around at the time of Watergate, or who remembers what that was, will remember the night that President Richard Nixon fired a bunch of the Watergate prosecutors, and how that made him look even guiltier than that the missing 18 minutes in the White House Tapes, the ones where he recorded everything that was said in his office.  We don’t know, for sure, what was on those 18 minutes, and the White House said the erasure was an accident.  The problem with that came out when it was shown that for the secretary to have erased those tape she would have had to have been a contortionists who could hold that pose for the entire 18 minutes.  Not likely.

Maybe the overall problem was, as Nixon would say later, that he allowed an “atmosphere” into the White House that allowed his staff to believe he would support them, or maybe he was just a crook.

The upshot of all this was that taken together, the tapes, the missing part of the tape, the firing itself,  and the number of staff members who went to jail it was plain to the world that he just headed off the impeachment with his resignation.

There might have been nothing more to it than over-enthusiastic staff playing at being spies, or it could be that Nixon himself was behind it, we can but conjecture as the White House spent so much time stonewalling the whole thing.

My point is, even if there were no collusion with the Russians, President Trump seems to be working hard in an effort to make us think there is something to the idea.

So what if a number of his aids are under investigation or have pleaded guilty to charges, or even his threats to derail the entire investigation, right now you can’t say yes, or no, to the idea.

What I suggest is simple.  I would like President Trump to come out in supporting the overall search for the truth.  It might be hard to prove there was no collusion as it is often hard to prove something did not happen.

I can see where he might be concerned with the possibility of an impeachment proceeding taking place, as they do not use the same rules of law as found in a real court and an impeachment might just be politically motivated, in which case maybe he can get it done while the Republicans still hold Congress?  At least those who decide they want to go on record as supporting the Donald.

I am not sure if the double jeopardy applies to Congress, they might even try again, if a first attempt fails, after the mid-terms.

We might even be able to sneak a few people into the White House staff who have at least some idea what they are doing?



That Joe Guy.

P.S.  In the interest of full disclosure I would like to state that in 2016 I voted for the Libertarian Candidate.


I have an idea..

I was recently reading about the sanctuary Cities, or areas.  While I was reading some of the material, like how it was suggested that California might want to succeed from the United States. the idea came to me that we might be able to deal with a couple of the illegal immigration issues.

Why don’t we take a look at the Kurt Russel movies, “Escape from New York” and “Escape from L.A.”.  We could pick a spot and declare it an “International Sanctuary Area”, and give it to the United Nations to administer, or just call it “Sanctuary City”.

It seems that the people in that area, San Francisco comes to mind, don’t really want to be part of the United States so maybe they would like the idea of going on their own, and they would get all of those illegal immigrants that come here in violation of our laws.

We could even provide public transportation to the City, and just build a wall around that, plus we would not have to deport anyone, just transfer them to this location.

We keep hearing from President Trump about these people, not just the Mexicans, being criminals, drug mules, and rapist, so we can let them have what they want and still keep them out of the United States.  Yes we still want immigration, just not the people who show contempt for our country by breaking in.

Would you invite the people who break into your home to be members of your family?

Does the bank offer savings accounts to people who rob it?

So we take an area, again San Francisco comes to mind, build a great honking wall around it and let these people settle there.

We could even scatter video feeds around the area and make it into a “Real Reality Show” like “Survival City”?  It might be able to pay for itself with pay per view and season passes?

Just a thought.


That Joe Guy.