One item $till making it through ea$ily:
"$90b spent on border security, with mixed results" by Martha Mendoza, Associated Press / June 26, 2011
HIDALGO, Texas — As Congress debates border funding and governors demand more aid to curb illegal immigration and other problems, government records show that taxpayers have spent $90 billion over 10 years to secure the US-Mexican border....
For taxpayers footing these bills, the returns have been mixed: fewer illegal immigrants but little impact on the terrorism issue, and no stoppage of the drug supply, officials said.
Related: End the Drug War Now
The terrorists who carried out the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, did not come from Mexico, but 9/11 led politicians to reexamine border security. Ten days later, President Bush announced a new Department of Homeland Security, with tasks including the security of the nation’s porous southern border.
Over the next 10 years, annual border spending tripled as the United States built an unprecedented network along the 1,900-mile border with Mexico: 165 truck and train X-ray machines; 650 miles of heavy-duty fences and sheer concrete walls; twice as many law enforcement officers along the entire stretch; and a small fleet of Predator drones.
The program also includes remote surveillance cameras, thermal imaging devices, and partly buried ground sensors that sound an alarm at headquarters if someone steps on one in the desert....
Early concerns that terrorists could sneak weapons into the United States from Mexico were later overshadowed by worries about violent drug cartels slaughtering people across the Rio Grande. As the US economy faltered, preventing illegal immigrants from sneaking north for jobs became the focus....
The buildup has dramatically reduced illegal immigration. Ten years ago, border agents caught 1.6 million illegal immigrants in one year. Last year they caught 463,000.
Maybe they just caught less, period.
The drop is attributed in part to the US recession, which decreased jobs, but it is also an indication, according to federal officials, that fewer people are attempting to cross the border illegally.
Okay.
But the spending has not worked to stop the flow of illegal drugs.
Pffft!
Last year, border guards seized a record 254,000 pounds of cocaine, 3.6 million pounds of marijuana, and 4,200 pounds of heroin. In response, Mexico’s cartel bosses simply sent more: trainloads of marijuana, cocaine stuffed in fenders and dashboards, heroin packed into young men’s shoes.
An estimated 660,000 pounds of cocaine, 44,000 pounds of heroin, and 220,000 pounds of methamphetamine are on American streets in a given year, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
A fraction of that amount is seized at the border, a small operating cost for Mexico’s drug lords, who will reap an estimated $25 billion this year from US sales.
Last month, a Justice Department study reviewing the total cost of illicit drug use in the United States, using cost-of-illness studies, federal crime and caseload statistics, and economic models, came up with a figure of $193 billion per year.
Time to legalize.
--more--"
Also see: Mexican Omission Off the Rails
