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Comment by caseysoftware | Hacker News Reader

> The latest data from the U.S. Border Patrol shows that last year, marijuana seizures along the southwest border tumbled to their lowest level in at least a decade.

That does not mean there are less drugs being imported, just that less are being seized. I worked with the Border Patrol years ago and it was astounding how they tracked success:

- When arrests increased, they celebrated that enforcement was working.

- When arrests decreased, they celebrated that deterrence was working.

Heads I win, tails you lose.

While I'm in favor of legalization, you should take these numbers and the process that created them with a grain of salt..

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Speaking of the US Border, it is way more porous than many people think. Here is a photo of the 2 strands of barbed wire that make up the border fence near Locheil Arizona.

If you ride your dirt bike along the border there (I did), then you will find a few dirt roads that cross the border that look heavily used. I spent 8 hours down there and was not approached by any Border Patrol (Saw some from 100 feet away, but no contact)

There is so much stuff crossing the border, in so many places.

https://www.google.com/maps/@31.333054,-110.626566,3a,75y/da...

I think most people (at least from the Southwest) know about this; otherwise Donald Trump's desire to "build a wall" would be incoherent.

I am surprised by the number of Tucson, AZ residents (where I live) that think there already is a large wall, all across the USA. You certainly see a large wall in Nogales, AZ/ Nogales SON. It is only there for the TV cameras, since a few miles out of town it is back to dual strand barbed wire cattle fence. Everybody who lives within a few miles either side of the border knows this - people in Tucson 60 miles away are not so clear.

They watch the evening news, see a big wall on TV, hear Trump talk about extending the wall, assume it's the same wall all across the USA, and then continue on with their life like normal humans.

http://tomohalloran.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/wall-noga...

compare that to the photo of the barbed wire fence along the border in the other comment.

I'm from Arizona too and lived in Tucson for four years :)

I'm genuinely surprised by your experience. Maybe I was simply lucky enough to only talk about border issues with more educated than average people. I guess it's because I was in college when I lived there, and mostly hung out with Latino college students.

I visited a couple of locals on the US side of the Nogales border, and they showed me the sights. "Here is the border fence... and 8 miles further (drive drive) here is where it runs out, and they come over those hills there (drive drive) these houses being built are where the immigrants spend their first nights before heading inland...".

We drove past a border patrol depot, and there were literally hundreds of vehicles. "Wow, the border patrol must have a huge number of staff to keep most of those active at once" > "No, those are just for the TV cameras - border patrol doesn't have anywhere near that number of staff"

Other oddities that stuck out for me in the area were that the border ingress to Mexico was literally just a turnstile, and that the distance markers about 20km short of the border on the US side were, indeed, in km instead of miles.

yup, search for "metric": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_19

Aren't borders such silly concepts?

Borders delineate jurisdictions of legal authority, and accommodate the ability for different communities to enact different laws. If you are a fan of the rule of law, you should appreciate borders.

Why are borders silly? I guess it's fun to say but what does that mean? Is it silly that people that live in Vermont have access to the kind of legal due process and protections afforded by the U.S. government that people in Colombia do not?

> Is it silly that people that live in Vermont have access to the kind of legal due process and protections afforded by the U.S. government that people in Colombia do not?

Yes, that's the point. For a country whose first words were "all men are created equal" we've built up a mindboggling apparatus for demonstrating that that's not true.

From the perspective of a humanist, borders are kind of arbitrary. Simply because you had the shit luck of being born maybe a few kilometers South of the most southern states, you end up getting a way worse experience in life and your ticket is almost entirely predetermined.

I agree on law and order, but again, isn't it a little crazy that in one state you have one set of laws and then once you cross an imaginary line you get an entirely new set of laws?

Oh, I think the "states" are unnecessary in the US. I agree with that. But borders between nations are, outside of a worldwide utopia, are rather necessary.

but they aren't essential

Donald Trump's desire to "build a wall" is incoherent.

You don't understand what I meant by "incoherent". I am very pro free movement. I consider my homeland to be the multi-ethnic region consisting of the SW USA and northern Mexico and viscerally hate the idea of some man made wall dividing it.

However, it's a perfectly coherent idea: it has a concrete meaning that is easy to understand.

The desire to "build a wall" is a reaction of locals along the border to the realities there, and that reaction diffuses through the rest of the population who aren't on the border but who see problems that they perceive (or are persuaded to perceive) might be solved by curtailing illegal immigration. They may be wrong about, or miscalculating, the ultimate consequences of a wall, but the perceived need for some kind of "wall" is coherent in an immediate sense.

What do you think is incoherent? A plan to build some kind of physical wall (barrier), or a serious plan to keep people from crossing the border outside of the normal immigration process, or both?

His desire is coherent and certainly appeals to millions of Americans.

Whether it is realistic, plausable, beneficial, cost effective, or just plain stupid is another question.

It may be unrealistic, but it seems coherent enough to me. What's so crazy about border control?

Making Mexico pay for it for one and the other crazy ideas he wraps up in it. That, indeed, does make his plan incoherent.

If he means it's going to come out of their pockets directly, he's deluded.

On the other hand, given the trade deficit he could say, we're pulling out of Nafta, unless you kerb your unauthorized border crossings.

Alternatively he could fine the unauthorized border crossers they catch and partially fund it that way. Or he could institute temporary permits (seasonal whatever) and impose a fee for those. Also fine employers who hire undocumented workers and fund it partially that way.

It really depends on what he means by "Mexico" and "pay". But if he's flexible, and he appears to be, it could be possible.

In fact Trump has mentioned ideas such as a special tax on any money sent to Mexico, which is certainly plausible.

Trump doesn't help his case by simply headlining "and Mexico will pay for it" over and over, but he does mention practical suggestions (even if you remain opposed to the fundamental concept) from time to time on most of his policies.

I think you are getting brow-beaten by a kind of pedantry here, sorry for that. I'm taking you to mean that his statements are those of a buffoon that no one in intellectual society should take seriously. I agree with you.

Donald Trump's incoherent.

He is coherent in the fantasy world of his supporters. And he has millions of them. And their fantasy is a possible reality soon. I laughed at Trump when he started to run for president. It is not so funny anymore, his odds have gone up.

If he wins, the next reasonable US president will be celebrated by the rest of the world with a lot more than a pre-emptive Nobel peace prize...

> Speaking of the US Border, it is way more porous than many people think.

Why would I think it wouldn't be porous? It's been that way the entire history of the world, why should we change it now?

Although there isn't so much of an immigration issue, the border between the EU and Russia is also non-existent in a lot of places:

https://euobserver.com/justice/130037

A problems for drones to solve I guess.

That's true and a good point, but the article also quotes a Mexican grower who says the bulk price has come down about 50%. That's money right out of the cartels pockets.

It's money out of the grower's pockets, for sure. But the cartels, they'll just focus on other products.

Pivoting doesn't come without any cost, focusing on other products means large investments in infrastructure, which was earlier set up for marihuana and became unprofitable. However you want to look at it, it's a loss for the cartels in the short term. In the long term, it depends on what they decide to focus on; hopefully, we'll legalize that next thing before the cartels start making a huge profit from it.

Yeah, but extortion and kidnapping don't scale as well as the drug trade does.

All government programs tend to work like that. Recession ? Private players to be blamed and government needs to act. Economic boom ? Government programs caused that boom.

The legalization of marijuana is a much bigger battle. We will not get all the benefits of the free market unless government regulations are substantially reduced. If you cant buy Marijuana in Target or Wallmart it probably wont suffice.

All government programs tend to work like that. Recession ? Private players to be blamed and government needs to act. Economic boom ? Government programs caused that boom.

Recession? Poor private companies groaning under the massive burden of big-government regulation, and idiotic government "interventions" in the market are to blame! Economic boom? The miracle of the free market succeeding in spite of all obstacles! Hail the market! Down with big government!

The difference, of course, is that I don't know anyone who actually takes the "government is always the solution" line, but I do know plenty of people who take the "government is always the problem" line. So, um, nice straw man you've go there.

>"The difference, of course, is that I don't know anyone who actually takes the "government is always the solution" line, but I do know plenty of people who take the "government is always the problem" line. So, um, nice straw man you've go there."

I take it you haven't had much debate around the concept of a free-society without government. You bring that one out, and suddenly everyone is a statist that thinks that "government is always the solution", for every problem imaginable.

Heck, I'm an anarcho-capitalist and even I think government should be the solution to every problem. That is, as long as I'm paying taxes. While that's the case they better well be using my tax contributions to solving those damn problems, even if government isn't the "best" solution for them.

I think they meant, that's how all government programmes measure what they've done.

I get that measuring the effectiveness of enforcement is inherently difficult, but isn't the number of arrests made far away from the border an excellent proxy for how poorly border control is working? You can't isolate yourself from drugs manufactured in-state or from failures of other border patrol units (or successes of drug enforcement away from the border), but you also can't fuck with the stats.

Fucking with stats has always a key aspect of law enforcement.

The best numbers to use are the prices, which they also cite.

Granted, there are still multiple factors at work and you need to take several measurements.

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