Fences and Walls

When a homeowner wants to put up a fence or a wall they have to consider a few things. What or who are they trying to keep out or in? What is the initial cost? What is the maintenance cost? What are the alternatives?

Would you really want to pay the maintenance costs on a 700 mile chain link fence? You would need to hire a crew to work on the fence every day. I the people trying to get through the fence are motivated or desperate enough, you will need a lot more than one crew.  If we can't afford to spend money on education, health care, and other necessary things, why would we do something stupid like build a 700 mile fence? It's not a "build it and forget about it" solution.

It is a better idea than putting people in prison for coming here illegally. Whoever came up with that idea ate too many paint chips as a kid. Our prisons are over crowded. We don't have adequate funding for the ones we have, so more prisons isn't an intelligent idea. We don't have adequate funding to patrol the borders and ports. "Let's combine those problems and put the illegal immigrants in prison." People coming here to pick strawberries don't frighten me.  Politicians wanting to put people in prison for such a minor white collar type of crime, frighten me. Essentially the difference between an illegal alien and a legal one is the paperwork.  If a politician doesn't have his paperwork exactly right for his campaign finances, should we put him in prison? Sounds like a better idea than putting illegal aliens in prison. If we put a politician in prison we don't have to pay that politician. We can even charge them for the cost of their incarceration. We can't get any money from people who are in a situation that is so desperate they are willing to risk their lives to do jobs we won't do for wages we won't take.