To fence or not to fence the Southwest border

Hugh Hewitt:

"A fence from left to right, from east to west, except obviously the mountainous areas," Charles Krauthammer told me on air in an interview in late April.

"We know that fences work," he continued. "If the president tells you fences don't work, ask him why he's got one around the White House."

Krauthammer is easily the most influential commentator on the center-right today, and his position on the need for a very long border fence is a majority position within the conservative movement and indeed far beyond the movement.

Republicans outside of the Beltway are divided into two camps on immigration reform.

Camp one will accept and indeed many will enthusiastically support immigration reform built around real border security, which has as its centerpiece the construction of a very long double-sided fence with mandated design and location, assured funding and "notwithstanding any other law" authority.

That latter provision is to ensure that the fence will not be impeded by provisions of the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act or the National Environmental Policy Act. I am in camp one, as I suspect many millions of Republicans are.

Fencing has been promised and even passed in the past but never built except for tiny segments. Thus, the need for specificity and guarantees that are easily produced in a well-written law.

Camp two wants no part of the Senate bill, whether or not it has a fence. John Hinderaker of the Power Line blog, for example, hates the bill and the effort and writes at length and eloquently as to why it is a bad idea.

So people like me in camp one, "the fence people," are fighting it out on talk radio, on the blogs and in person with people in camp two, the "not now, not this" people.

The Beltway GOP, in yet another display of astonishing indifference to the people who fund it and elect its members, is preparing to anger and alienate both camps.
...

In West Texas along the border, water is a scarce commodity and ranchers need access to the river for their cattle.  They naturally oppose a fence.  The solution for their problem would probably be a series of blims like those used in Afghanistan that would monitor any attempts to cross the river and alert the border patrol or local law enforcement.

My problem with the law is that there is no deterrent for future illegal immigration.  It does not fix that problem and only exacerbates it by rewarding those who came already illegally.  As long as the consequences for coming here illegally is a path to citizenship even if it is a long path, then more will come.  The reason Democrats seek this is they view these people as future Democrat voters.  Republicans should take that message to heart and insist on no path to citizenship.