DON´T FENCE US IN

“BUILD a fence, they're going to go over it, under it, around it,” declares Jim Pederson to the Democratic Party faithful gathered in the American Legion hall of San Manuel, a drab little town whose miners once carved giant scars into the copper-rich mountains north of Tucson. “Why don't we have a sensible programme?”

In the politics of Arizona, the entry point across the vast Sonoran desert for perhaps 400,000 of the million-odd illegal immigrants who each year smuggle themselves into America, that is a sensitive question. By overwhelming majorities in both House (283-138) and Senate (80-19), Congress ended its pre-election session by voting to build a 700-mile (1,125km) fence along the most vulnerable sections of America's almost 2,000-mile long border with Mexico. Is Mr Pederson, a shopping-mall magnate now vying to be Arizona's junior senator, decrying the notion of border security? Is he, indeed, proposing “amnesty”—the code word that enrages the Republican base across the nation—for the 12m or so illegal residents who help pick America's crops, build its houses, manicure its lawns and baby-sit its infants?

LINK