Private Border Fences

This is something the Minutemen should have started from the very beginning, rather than aiding the state in ruining the lives of people who cross an arbitrary political line in order to work for a living.

Minuteman border watch leader Chris Simcox has a message for President Bush: Build new security fencing along the border with Mexico or private citizens will.

[...]

"We have had landowners approach," Simcox said in an interview. "We've been working on this idea for a while. We're going to show the federal government how easy it is to build these security fences, how inexpensively they can be built when built by private people and free enterprise."

Simcox said a half-dozen landowners along the Arizona-Mexico border have said they will allow fencing to be placed on their borderlands, and others in California, Texas and New Mexico have agreed to do so as well.

"Certainly, as with everything else, we're only able to cover a small portion of the border," Simcox said. "The state and federal government have bought up most of the land around the border. I suspect that's why we'll never get control of the border."

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

To the extent the land this fencing is built upon is owned by the person building the fence or is owned by someone who wants the fence built, I think this is a legitimate response to border insecurity.

However, if the fence is built without the consent of the land's legitimate owner, then I think it constitutes an invasion at least as bad as a Mexican trespassing on your land without your permission. And no, I don't consider land possessed by the state to be owned legitimately.

Posted by Drizzten at April 20, 2006 11:05 AM