> Seems to me if you see someone crossing the border illegally that’s only really useful if you can apprehend them before you lose track of them.
Will nobody acknowledge how ridiculous a concept absolute security of a border is? Nobody would want what this would actual look like—extremely violent and expensive with little benefit to anyone.
You think it would be better to have an open boarder? No other country seems to think that's a good idea.
What do you think the ideal solution should look like? Keep in mind that you'll have to defend against or allow into the country economic migrants looking for higher wages, millions of truly desperate climate refugees who don't have homes to go back to, as well as terrorists and criminals.
No one in the EU has open borders. They have agreements with neighbors, much in the same way you can drive to a neighboring state in the US without much restriction, but interstate travel in the US and citizens of the EU going over the border for a holiday are very different from the situation we have with our southern border (and even with our northern border).
The relevant border policies inside the EU are literally called open borders. I don’t know what would you call open borders if not what we have between EU countries.
> interstate travel in the US and citizens of the EU going over the border for a holiday are very different from the situation we have with our southern border
EU internal migration is relatively non-controversial, at least after the UK left the bloc and people realized how much of a trainwreck leaving the EU would be. Brexit happened mainly because English speakers are painfully stubborn monolingualists.
On the other hand, EU external immigration is extremely controversial. Huge parts of the EU have an extreme far-right that's polling extremely well, and the liberal/centrist parties are all bowing to them by basically copypasting their entire external immigration playbook. The two major fronts in the EU immigration debate boil down to "do we just turn away all asylum seekers or do we start deporting citizens we don't like too?"
The reason why this happened is that the EU suuuuucks at integrating external migrants, especially from poorer countries. I think I saw a statistic which was that, like, Turks that move to the US hate the shit out of Erdogan as much as native-born Americans do, but those that move to Germany wind up loving him more than those that didn't emigrate[0]. Or something like that. The US at least has family migration, which means we've spent the last 50 years learning how to integrate basically everyone, which is the kind of institutional experience the EU's member states lack.
[0] Like to the point of joining hilariously (and illegally) far-right biker gangs
Switzerland is part of the Schengen but not the EU, I guess Norway is in that boat also. If we are just talking about open borders, then it isn’t limited to the EU (the UK wasn’t in the Schengen even when it was in the EU).
Absolute border security - it is literally impossible by land/sea/air/tunnel to cross into the US territory from Mexico without rapid detection and response.
...
Open border - the US does not impede general traffic from Mexico, bringing certain goods remains illegal but enforcement of this is limited to additional penalties after apprehension.
We are pretty far from both of those right now. I don't think the person you initially replied to was arguing for an open border. But surely it's not an ideal use of resources to stop all of these border based crimes in real time?
Most people are not crossing illegally. Those that do are going to have to actively evade those consequences as long as they continue an unpermitted stay. How much of our GDP should we spend to move "up" that spectrum? What benefits are we gaining by doing so? What consequences do we face?
Hospitals, schools, infrastructure, social services, housing, they all depend on planning for funding and to keep pace with population to avoid being overrun. Things are bad enough right now with the massive numbers of economic migrants coming into the country, but once there are literal billions of climate refugees things will be much worse unless we are prepared.
Now is the time to invest in the regulation of immigration and defense of our borders so that we can safely accommodate as many of the people climate change displaces as we can. We also need to be thinking about what climate change will do to populations within the US.
If you think it isn't worth the investment, even in low cost expenses like cameras, I can only imagine you aren't living near the boarder or aren't considering the refugee crisis that is coming.
NYC has a bunch of uniquely New York problems that make accommodating anyone - refugees or otherwise - impossible. It's some of the most expensive real estate in the world, in a city that's seeing huge population outflows, burdened by an extremely top-heavy city and state government. If you don't have a tax base, you can't accomodate anyone.
But there's plenty of America that isn't NYC.
Furthermore, Eric Adams is... ugh. How do I put it? The Wikipedia article on him has an above-the-fold mention of him doing community work with Nation of Islam[0], as an NYPD cop. He got elected because NY liberals would vote for Trump if he had a D next to his name. Furthermore, federal investigations have revealed he's a foreign agent of Turkiye and Erdogan, up to and including denying the Armenian Genocide[1]. He's hilariously incompetent and malicious at the same time.
[0] I mentioned this on a Discord call with a friend, who responded, "OH MY GOD, HE'S INTO THE BLITLER SHIT?"
I mean, yeah, places like NYC and Chicago genuinely do have some really messed up situations, but almost any large city would become quickly overwhelmed when a bunch of people unexpectedly show up needing help, smaller cities don't stand a chance.
Exactly. Once "the border" became politicized, very few people allow themselves to think in terms of a spectrum. They just stand up a straw man on either extreme end and argue against it.
Almost nobody is arguing for absolute open borders or absolute closed borders.
Will nobody acknowledge how ridiculous a concept absolute security of a border is? Nobody would want what this would actual look like—extremely violent and expensive with little benefit to anyone.