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Taking the law into your own hands.

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Publicly, authorities have discouraged citizen patrol groups, which civil rights advocates and Mexican officials have accused of being abusive "vigilantes." But in an approach that the critics say encourages vigilantism, U.S. agents routinely accept immigrants caught by such patrols, and return the immigrants to Mexico.

Now Glenn Spencer, a retired oilman from Sierra Vista, Ariz., is adding a new chapter to the increasingly tense debate over citizen border patrols. This month, Spencer launched a small, unmanned spy plane that includes cameras and a global positioning system to help him and other members of a private group called American Border Patrol identify illegal immigrants who try to slip into the USA across Arizona's vast desert.

Spencer says the $20,000 drone, which has a wingspan of 6 feet and still is being tested, will take off when one of dozens of ground sensors placed along the border detect foot traffic. The drone then will take photographs that will be relayed to U.S. authorities.

What do you think about people taking the law into their own hands. We do have in the states the right to make a citizen's arrest. But honestly, I don't know when or how that works.

Also, a second thought, I'll bet these ranchers who can spend $20,000 on a drone plane to patrol the border also get money from the government to ranch federal land. So we seem to have made these ranchers pretty rich. Do they need subsidies if they're blowing it on drones?

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    What you should be asking yourself since you raised the it in another thread sometime ago is just how this shows the failings of NAFTA which you so blithely suggested the UK give up the EU in favour of joining.

    Truth is, for anyone who cares to do some research rather than just throw out trade grouping acronyms without the slightest comprehension of their actual functionality, is that NAFTA has long been a stagnant pond of potential and promise with zero delivery, unlike the EU which has consistently strengthened the ties between European nations and opened up many avenues for cross border trade and employment.

    In a recent televised discussion in which US/Mexican relations and NAFTA were discussed (BBC 24 or CNN I believe) the very fact raised by your post above was commented on by a number of international policy analysts who pointed out that since NAFTA was signed illegal immigration from Mexico into the US has actually increased. This, they noted, gives indications that the economic benefits enshrined in the agreement have never materialised in more than a decade of its existence. The US gets richer and Mexico gets more polluted from environmentally irresponsible companies simply moving manufacturing over the border but in such insignificant amounts as to be of little impact on Mexico's soaring unemployment levels.

    What's more, especially in the new Bush era with talk of "free" trade and the subsequent imposition of renewed tariff barriers, the promised land of a US market for cheaper goods from south of the border has proven an illusion.

    Years ago when I first began my career as a researcher in the European Parliament just prior the inauguration of the Single Market, I recall being inundated with reports of Washington's assertions that what was being created was little more than a Fortress Europe.

    Seems time and events have only come to show that the real fortress is my beloved homeland itself, under the bootheel of corrupt corporate moguls out for total global hegemony and their right wing minions in Washington ever ready to deny access to our vast market and the natural competition that fuels innovation and growth. As we've also seen in the recent past they are all too eager as well to wage wars in order to pave the geo-political way for further corporate plundering by their billion dollar backers.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I agree with what you said. A strong, peaceful, Europe is actually good for America too.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Good post Clan but I think the issue is even wider and the hypocrisy even deeper.

    The leaders of our nations champion free-trade and the populace accepts because it can make us richer (although the benefits for poorer nations are diputable) whilst we spare to effort to prohibit the free movement of the labour market which is as much a part of the global market as goods or capital yet people feel that immigration may harm us (as well as being rascist and xenophobic) so they try to prevent it and the governments pander to it..........

    The hypocrisy disgusts me.........
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    whilst we spare to effort to prohibit the free movement of the labour market

    Interesting angle and I just wonder how much terrorism is an excuse to deny immigrants entry for some of these people who are supposedly protecting us.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Considering that the major political camp from which Bush and his cronies draw their primary political support is the neo-conservative, neo-isolationists, it makes perfect sense that they of all our domestic interest blocs would wish to restrict if not eliminate all immigration.

    However, in the end such a political agenda is self defeating for our nation as a whole given that protected markets leads to stagnation domestically whilst inspiring tit for tat responses from other nations who cease to allow Americans to travel, work or live abroad or institute nightmarish bureaucratic obstacles that make professional and labour migrations too costly to contemplate.

    I truly wish youd finally wake up pnj and realise that the future economic potential of the entire country is being driven by an agenda that hails from the largely isolated heartland of the nation and in no way reflects the needs and concerns of the more advanced and growth oriented eastern and western regions.

    Do you really think another four years of Bush and Rumsfeld's global warmongering, political bullying, and global economic plundering mentality coupled with Ashcroft's neo-nazi like aspirations to run the nation as his personal police state through the DHD are going to leave your future prospects for a financially stable and peaceful future brighter or gloomier?

    Wake up call, my boy!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I'm awake. Did somebody set my alarm?:crazyeyes
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