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308nato wrote:KBCraig it sounds a little like a east- west Berlin type senario they are trying.

The comparison is apt.

When I was stationed in Germany from 1986-89, I was in Fulda with 1/11 ACR, and we had the Inter-German Border mission. Our neighboring sister squadron to the north was 3/11 ACR, and one time my unit deployed up to OP Romeo to cover for them during training. One of the towns in their border sector was much like Derby Line: the imaginary lines on the ground drawn by governments at war, sometimes ran right through houses. (In Derby Line's case, it was a faulty survey that led to the confusion, but it is still an imaginary line.)

In the East/West German case, interior brick walls were erected to mark the border. People living under the same roof couldn't pass from one room to the next if it was on the wrong side of that line.

Texarkana famously has the federal building (courthouse and post office) that sits astride the border in the middle of State Line Avenue. Two blocks south, the border bisects the Bi-state Justice Building, where Arkansas and Texas police departments, judges, and bi-state jail all operate on both sides of the border. Both of the states and cities have passed legislation that authorizes police from either side to work on both sides of the line.

Derby Line has their library and opera house as an equivalent. The big difference is that it's not a federal crime to cross the hall in the Texarkana federal building, and that immigration agents aren't waiting to arrest people who pose with one foot in each state on Photographer's Island. Meanwhile in the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, mind your feet: you could scoot your chair the wrong way and become an illegal immigrant:

The Annoyed Man wrote:KB, that's interesting. I've driven from Burlington Vermont to Toronto and back, but I've never heard of Derby Line or Rock Island.

You went up I-89; Derby Line is on I-91.

KBCraig wrote:I don't understand how two governments should dictate that neighbors who chat across the street in Derby Line, Vermont and Rock Island, Quebec, must go through government checkpoints to actually cross the street and shake hands; this is as unfathomable to me as if I was required to get government permission to turn left from State Line Avenue, from Texarkana Texas to Texarkana Arkansas.

Wow, when I wrote that last night, I had no idea this article had appeared in yesterday's Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00816.html

Homeland Security Comes to Vermont
Changes in Border Town Unsettle Some Residents

DERBY LINE, Vt. -- The changes started coming slowly to this small town where the U.S. border with Canada runs across sleepy streets, through houses and families, and smack down the middle of the shared local library.

First was the white, painted lettering on the pavement on three little side streets -- "Canada" on one side, "U.S.A." on the other. Then came the white pylons denoting which side of the border was which. After that, signboards were erected on some streets, ordering drivers to turn back and use an officially designated entry point.

And along with the signposts came an influx of American Border Patrol agents, cruising through the town in their green-and-white sport-utility vehicles with sirens, chasing down cars and mopeds that ignored the posted warnings.

For longtime residents accustomed to a simpler life that flowed freely across a largely invisible border, the final shock -- and what made most people really take notice -- was a proposal by the border agents last year to erect fences on the small streets to officially barricade the United States from Canada, and neighbor from neighbor.

"They're stirring up a little hate and discontent with that deal," said Claire Currier, who grew up in this border area and works at Brown's Drug Store, which has operated on the same spot since 1884. "It's like putting up a barrier. We've all intermingled for years."

More at the link above.

The Annoyed Man wrote:

KBCraig wrote:The real Tom Paine would mop the floor with this xenophobic fool.

Oh there's no doubt that he's a xenophobe. What I like about the video is that he places his cards on the table. There's no doubt about what he stands for, right or wrong. When I see Obama shrugging off hard questions as being above his pay grade, it makes me long for a more plain spoken political landscape.

That certainly is refreshing in today's political climate, so I understand your point in posting this.

Personally, I have strong feelings against illegal immigration, but I am also a Christian who feels compelled to extend grace and mercy whenever possible, and therefore, I cannot hate them just because they are different from me. I hope this convinces you that I am not myself a xenophobe.

Certainly, and I hope I didn't imply that you were. If you'll allow, I'll offer my views on borders.

I have a philosophical disagreement with borders. For example, I don't understand how crossing the Rio Grande or the St. Laurence is somehow magically different from crossing the Red or the Sabine. I don't understand how Cubans who make it above the high tide line are more entitled to asylum than those who are caught wading ashore from a sunken raft. I don't understand how Cuban victims of a brutal dictatorship enjoy this special privilege, which is denied to Salvadorans, Hondurans, or any of the hundreds of millions of victims of tinpot despots around the world.

I don't understand how two governments should dictate that neighbors who chat across the street in Derby Line, Vermont and Rock Island, Quebec, must go through government checkpoints to actually cross the street and shake hands; this is as unfathomable to me as if I was required to get government permission to turn left from State Line Avenue, from Texarkana Texas to Texarkana Arkansas.

But if borders must exist --and governments seem to think they must, so that they can define themselves-- I don't have an objection to requiring people to check in on their way in, and letting us know when they leave.

The surest way to "seal the borders" is to open them. Think about it: tens of thousands of illegal immigrants don't come to America just because they want to pay thousands to coyotes to guide them on a life-threatening trek across open desert late at night. They don't cut fences and litter ranches because they'd rather do that than drive. The borders are porous because they can't just drive up the highway!

Let non-citizens freely check in and out at the border crossing points, and our national resources monitoring the rest of the border would know that anyone crossing in the middle of the desert is someone who probably really needs to be checked out, instead of someone who just wants to roof your house.

When it comes to current immigration policy, I'm reminded of a saying we used often in the Army: "We're hunting elephants here, so don't stop to examine mouse (droppings)!"

The real Tom Paine would mop the floor with this xenophobic fool.