How secure is secure?

The TV is full of talk about "securing the border" before doing an immigration bill.  Sounds good, but what do we mean by "secure".  No matter what we do, the occasional lucky alien will get across now and then.  And, those that do, won't tell anyone that they made it.  So there is no way to actually measure the security of the border, in terms of how many aliens got thru or didn't get thru.
   More reasonable is to talk about a level of effort.  How much effort should be expended on border security?  For me, I'd settle for a good chain link fence running all the way from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, paralleled with a road to permit jeep borne patrols all along the border.  And enough Border Patrolmen to run a patrol about once an hour.  Do this much, and I'd call the border secure even if a few illegal aliens did slip across from time to time. 
   Others might call for more or less security.
   If  "a secure border" is necessary to more forward on an immigration bill, then we need to agree on just how secure is secure enough.  That is, if we honestly want to negotiate an immigration bill.
   We have plenty of dishonest politicians who talk the talk but actually won't walk the walk. 

More Topic Changing

NPR is still pushing for an immigration bill.  They have a new twist this morning.  We just give them green cards without a "path to citizenship".  Translation: we let them in to work but we don't give them the vote.  Sounds like we make them second class citizens, eligible to pay taxes and work long hours, but not eligible to vote.  That's good old liberal NPR's idea, not mine. 

Topic Changing

With the "fiscal cliff" only one month away, you would think the lame duck session of Congress would concentrate on doing something about it.
  This morning I hear NPR pushing for an immigration bill in the lame duck session.  Nice idea, but the immigration bill doesn't have a 1 January deadline.  Plus its a controversial issue, which will soak up more time and hot air than we have between now and 1 January.  Unless its a ploy to drive us over the fiscal cliff, we ought to do immigration after New Year.
   And, the presenter was taking the opportunity to push the "Dream Act" (green cards for college grads and veterans) which failed to pass a little while ago. 
   How about some lesser steps that might have a chance of passing?  Such as awarding full citizen ship to anyone who serves honorably in the armed forces.  Such as awarding green cards to college graduates in science, engineering or mathematics?  Such as clearing up the current logjam of immigration applications.  It's fair to give each applicant a yes or no answer within two months of putting it their paperwork. 

I hate to say it, but Obama did something right

His new plan for illegal immigrants under 30.  Any who came here as children, and have kept their noses clean, graduated high school and/or served in the military, we let 'em stay.  at least for a couple of  years. I'm for it.  If you are a kid, and your parents cross the US border bringing you with them,  there is nothing a kid can do about it.  If the kid grows up in America, there is really no place to deport him too with any justice.   We as country are better off with decent young people as citizens, contributing to the legal economy than we are with illegal aliens hunted by Mr. Migra and willing to do almost anything to avoid getting caught.
  For a second point, I strongly believe that anyone who has served in the US military should be granted citizenship upon his honorable discharge from the service.  You cannot find better citizens than veterans, anywhere, anyplace.  For that matter immigrants make the most loyal citizens we have.  The United States needs loyal citizens.  What makes the US a superpower is a large and loyal population, and we need to keep it that way.
  Carping about immigrants taking jobs from citizens is small minded union talk.  We have jobs in America, and we can make more of them.
   Too bad Obama cannot do this kind of thing the right way, by getting a law thru Congress.  It's a measure of how ineffectual Obama is that he didn't propose a law, lobby Congress to pass it, made the needed concessions here and there to get it thru.  He cannot negotiate worth a damn, and after three and a half years few in Congress trust him much.  It's hard to cut a deal with a man you don't trust, 'cause you fear he will welsh on it.  Nobody wants to be taken for a sucker.