lenaitch
Senior Member
It seems to make little sense to treat every little old lady (or a little old guy - like me) like a potential smuggler or terrorist, but accurate intelligence at the individual level on a massive scale is extremely difficult and relying solely on profiling (the type of person *likely* to be a smuggler/terrorist) to be effectively interpreted and exercised by literally hundreds of federal employees thousands of times a day has so much potential for grief for government agencies. It is helpful to remember that, in most cases, agents have mere minutes.I simply can't agree on this one.
To me the current level of border checking even for plane passengers is absurd and wasteful. It simply isn't justified on a risk-reward basis.
The U.S. clearly doesn't have a tight border, or it would have no material illicit drug issue, since the majority of cocaine and even heroin and opiods are all produced offshore.
Similarly, while lesser in scale than in the past, the U.S. has vast numbers of undocumented immigrants; while many did enter legally and simply overstayed their lawful welcome; many others walked right across the border and/or were stashed
in trucks or on ships etc etc.
Likewise, we only scratch the surface with illicit guns being taken into this country.
I'm not suggesting we abolish all borders and associated precautions, by any means. But each action we take should be evaluated on weighing its costs in time, hassle and money vs its perceived benefit.
If you believe these border measures have material impacts, I'd like to introduce you to the contraband trade down at Akwesasne ( a reserve on both sides of the border in eastern Ontario) or take you up to Lake of the Woods where you can hop, skip, jump and swim across the border pretty much at will.
The implicit level of surveillance has more holes in it than armour, and simply serves to cost us all a lot of money and time.
As a wise person once pointed out, you can choose to extol the virtues of a 700mile border wall on the U.S. southern border, or the 1,300 mile open doorway.
The former not being particularly effective, in light of the latter.
Akwesasne is a rather unique and confounding cases (what were they thinking?). We in southern Ontario get accustomed to being separated by physical barriers like lakes and rivers. There are many kilometers of border that are a line on a map and very remote, and several legitimate ports of entry where we can literally 'phone it in'.