I was thinking about a fence along the southern U.S. Border with Mexico. This led me to start calculating how much that would cost. Luckily, a salesman for a razor wire company was nice enough to tell me that a lot of people are doing projects for school on this very topic. He also pointed me to the website http://www.weneedafence.com. They have a good design which they estimated to cost between four and eight billion dollars. That is roughly equivalent to four B-2 bombers or Virginia class submarines. See the picture at http://www.weneedafence.com/the_solution.

This is a quote from the weneedafence.com website to put that cost into perspective”:
A barrier is an essential component of any effort to secure our borders; additional manpower alone cannot do the job.

Simply adding more border agents won't work unless there is one every hundred yards or so along the entire border. That would require between 150,000 and 200,000 agents and support personnel, rather than the 11,000 at present, and an annual budget of five to ten billion dollars.

So, for the one time cost of hiring additional agents for a single year, we could build this fence!

I am not going to address the humanitarian, “poor people just trying to get ahead” issues, but I will quote these figures from the United States Border Patrol website:

According to U.S. government sources, nearly 99% of all people arrested entering our country illegally are citizens of Mexico.

According to several U.S. Congressmen, more than 4,000 people die each year at the hands of illegal aliens living within the United States. They also report that if the number of people killed by illegal aliens operating motor vehicles on our roadways is added, the number exceeds 8,000 dead per year. My wife and daughter were both hit while riding their bicycles (last Thursday and Friday). Both drivers appeared to be hispanic. Am I profiling? Maybe. Is there a connection? Maybe.

So, why are we not billing Mexico for the expense of this barrier? Do we really need their products so badly that we are worried about upsetting them? This barrier would be on our side of the border, so they should have nothing to say about it. After all, we are just cleaning up the mess they have made in their own country because of the greed, the stupidity, and the lack of concern from the Mexican government for the Mexican people.

While I like the barrier planned by weneedafence.com, I think that the cameras should be augmented with gun shot sensors as well. According to a sales person at ShotSpotter (April 26, 2010), a ball park figure for one of their systems is 200-300k per square mile. According to the USBP website, the southern border is 2,000 miles long. Thus, the cost for these gun-shot sensors would only be $400,000,000. This would allow us to pin-point gun shots to within 20 feet of their origin! I am sure that with a length of 2,000 miles, there could be some sort of discount negotiated, so the cost should be much less than that.

The cameras would allow agents at a safe distance and location to view any intrusions and respond accordingly. The agents would be helped by open source software that can detect motion in an area protected by a camera. Many pages describe free webcam software for motion detection. See:
http://www.video-surveillance-guide.com/webcam-motion-detection-software.htm,
http://lifehacker.com/5233052/motion-detection-is-an-effective-dead-simple-security-camera-app
http://www.gotchanow.com and others.

This software in conjunction with a decent camera could provide the detection of intruders with no agent involvement! When an intrusion is detected, then the software would notify the control center of the location, so that one or two agents could handle the entire border. Of course, squads would need to be positioned so that a decent response time is provided. The same camera(s) could automatically be set to follow the intruders and give directional information.

Maybe they could even turn on electric fence power to slow down the intruders until agents arrive. Motion detection would be set from inside the DMZ to 5 feet from southern border fence in order to pick up intruders attempting to cut into fence. If the southern fence is 10 feet from the border, then any movement within that area would be a violation of U.S. Territory and subject to scrutiny. Signs would be posted in Spanish to inform people about that unfenced section of border property, and the criminal act of trespassing. The information from the cameras and gun shot sensors, in connection with armed drones, automated machine guns, and wild animals (such as coyotes and bears would quickly eliminate anyone in the zone), could protect the area inside the fence.

Yes, this same arrangement could be used to keep U.S. Citizens in the country as well, but Mexico would not be my first choice for a place to escape to if needed.

Crazy or Not? You decide!

How do you think the family of the rancher shot last week would vote on this?