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Strike that.  Give us your perimeter fences, surveillance drones and border guards.

“U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law a bill to improve security at his country’s border with Mexico.

The $600-million US measure will pay for the hiring of 1,000 new Border Patrol agents and the purchase of new communications gear — including surveillance drones.”

I guess the poor and tired masses need to go to a different country as the US is plum full up.

“But his administration has come under fire from many Republicans for not doing enough to prevent huge of numbers of Mexicans from illegally crossing the border into the U.S. The issue seems likely to play prominently in this fall’s mid-term elections.

The controversy over how best to deal with Mexican migrants came to wide public attention earlier this year, when Arizona passed a controversial law that required law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of anyone they reasonably suspect of being an illegal immigrant.”

Past the glaring police-state provisions that were once part of the Arizona bill, Obama guessed he would have to do something to support the xenophobic undercurrent that swirls in the southern states.  As the article says, mid term elections are coming, which I guess is code for pandering to the Republicans and putting ones own liberal democratic base into a deeper category of “ignore”.

I hypothesize that his move will only further alienate the people who elected Obama as president and will make the US electoral choice of the lesser of two evils a closer call.

“On Wednesday, Florida lawmakers introduced their own immigration bill that would require immigrants to carry valid documentation or be jailed for up to 20 days.”

Well, I guess Arizona cannot have all the authoritarian fun.  :/