Tuesday, July 3, 2007 | 7:39 a.m.
Recent letters to the editor for and against building a proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border mistakenly assume that taxpayers would have to foot the bill. Not so, Pat Buchanan says in his highly recommended recent book "State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America."
According to Buchanan, a permanent fence could be built across the entire 2,000-mile frontier for a cost of $8 billion. The security measure would consist of "twin fences, fifteen feet high, enclosing a two-lane road to permit the Border Patrol to move in both directions. Motion sensors would be buried in the roadway to detect people who had breached the outer fence. Beyond each fence would be coiled wire eight feet high. Beyond the wire would be ditches to stop the trucks and SUVs of the narcotics traffickers and their renegade Mexican Army and police allies."
Importantly, Buchanan's common-sense plan would incur no cost to taxpayers. Instead, a $2 toll for all travelers passing through one of 200 points of entry would fund the entire project in about 15 years.
Dan West, Las Vegas
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