The craziness of Tea Party hero Joe Miller has taken to new heights this week when he was giving his solution for securing our borders:
Most of what he said, he’s said before. I’ll try to post more on this later. But the comment that caught my attention most was one he made was in response to a question on illegal immigration.
Miller replied: “The first thing that has to be done is secure the border. . . East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow. Now, obviously, other things were involved. We have the capacity to, as a great nation, secure the border. If East Germany could, we could.”
Now for those who weren’t born until the 90s or later, you might not know how East Germany secured the border, but the rest of us do. Here’s a quick run down of how East Germany secured their border:
By 1980 the border was lined with 1,277km (794 miles) of metal fencing, 232km (144 miles) of minefields and 832km (517 miles) of anti-vehicle trenches. In 1984, the defences were further upgraded with the building of a 3 m (10 ft) high electric fence surmounted with razor edges, set about 450 m (500 yards) behind the main line of fencing.[8] The border was guarded by about 48,000 NVA border troops and Volkspolizei members; on the West German side, it was monitored by about 22,300 border police and customs officers.[1] It was run as a solely German concern, with the occupying powers (the Western Allies and the Soviet Union) maintaining military forces some way back from the line.
Add to that the fact the East German soldiers had standing orders to “shoot to kill”, then we got to really ask ourselves if this is what we want?
Miller also seems to ignore one major fact in the case of the Iron Curtain. It was built as part of the Cold War. Once the war was over, Ronald Reagan famously proclaimed, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Now I must have missed the part where we are at war with Mexico, so maybe Joe Miller can enlighten me (and the rest of the country).
I also wonder how much something like this would cost. Let’s face facts; if we try the iron curtain route, immigrants will just travel to where it stops. We got nearly 2,000 miles of border shared with Mexico and over 5,500 miles of border with Canada, and that doesn’t even included all the coastal areas. Securing a border the size of ours to the point immigrants can’t find a way around it would probably cost close to the trillion dollar range. How does Miller plan on paying for such an endeavor, when his answer to everything else is “cut taxes”?
Yeah Joe Miller is great at throwing out one liners that make the supporters cheer. I equate them to the rabbit chasing the carrot on a stick. The ideas might make them cheer, but actually making those ideas a reality are nothing more than a pipe dream.