re: #37 cliffster

C’mon, man, are you seriously arguing that there’s no crime problem along the Texas and Arizona border? Really?

I’m saying I haven’t seen any figures to back up it being a big problem, yes. For example, I was able to find a total of six kidnappings in one year. All the statistics I can find for El Paso shows it as a relatively safe city, compared to other US cities.

Furthermore, criminals tend to prey on their own, so I those figures don’t necessarily even represent attacks on innocents.

Before trying to solve a problem, I prefer to know there really is a problem. Obviously, I do think that the illegal drug trade is a problem in and of itself, but I’m not, until I actually see figures that show it, by that it’s spilling over into the civilian population.

I still would like to solve the problem largely through drug legalization, which would free up an absolutely enormous amount of law enforcement manpower for whatever the hell you want, including securing the border and catching illegal immigrants. I’d also like a path to citizenship that wasn’t a random lottery, so people could feel they really were doing something to move themselves forwards, rather than just depending on blind luck.