One of the groups I belong to ejected a member who had posted radical posts that were out of the topic, immigration.  I don't like such ugliness.  I actually engaged in a lengthy debate as to why, in a group devoted to Immigration, he posted an anti semitic Gun Control article along with one of the foulest pieces of photoshop I have seen.

His response was essentially that guns are a core right and taking them away opens the door for more abuses, like amnesty.  Oh and it wasn't offensive according to him.

Opinions vary.

The point of my posts to the group was that allowing tangential debates like that distract from the core issues of illegal immigration.

Ken Schram also is upset about the distractions to the debate, but he in his paranoia sees the Snark in every shadow.

If you discuss workplace enforcement, Illegals receiving amnesty, Social services for illegals and sanctuary cities, you are engaging in the distraction form the only issue he cares about:  The border fence.

Ken, whom I greatly respect, is a fool, and I will call him one to his face if I ever have the chance.

His tunnel vision on a fence is the distraction, because while border security is a huge issue, it is still only one element of many that need to be dealt with concurrently, not consecutively.

You cannot wait for a fence and then deal with amnesty and workplace enforcement.  Why?  Because the fence won't stop those coming in, and while you are building the fence, they will still come.

You have to deal with the magnet that draws them here as well.

Look at the border.  We have to decide how to fence or wall off thousands of miles of borders that encompass all manner of terrain.  Deserts, rocky wastes, forests, rivers, lakes, canyons and even private land.  Oh did you forget we have a northern border too?

No single type of structure can work in all places and even if you secure the Canadian and Mexican borders, what about the Oceans?  The Great lakes?  The gulf of Mexico?  What now, mutant trained piranhas?  Mines?  I know!  How about sharks with laser beams on their heads, it worked for Dr Evil.

Will we mine the crossings, and setup machine gun emplacements?  Electric fences and trip wires?  Shoot to kill?

No of course not. And since we won't, guess what.  They will look at the wall, and go through it, over it, under it, around it or whatever.  We have fences and walls now and that's what they do.

And consider that no matter how well you seal the borders, that will do NOTHING about the ones who come here legally and just overstay their visas.  You know, like the 911 hijackers?

So the same situation exists with your mythical border fence:  We still encourage and enable them to come here and to stay here by never really dealing with them.

We have to dry up their job markets and send them home.  And there is no legitimate reason to wait for the fence to be built to figure out how to do that, particularly when the fence won't really do that much good in the bigger picture.

We had better get serious about the debate and quite letting pointless distractions screw things up, even distractions like complaining about all the distractions.