Walling off the border?

Did you know that there is a wall along the US-Canadian border?

An International Boundry Commission wants it torn down. Bush actually wants it to stay up.

I know, after his ignorant support of the Immigration Surrender Bill, I’m confused too.

Shirley-Ann Leu said she and her husband had no idea what they were getting into when they hired a contractor to build the 4- foot-high concrete wall to prevent their backyard dirt from washing into an adjoining ditch. But that ditch behind their home at 4250 W. 99th St. is also the 49th parallel, the boundary between the U.S. and Canada.

The Leus said they had no idea that the International Boundary Commission, a joint panel with a commissioner from both countries, has been enforcing a so-called “boundary vista” for many decades. According to the commission’s interpretation of a 1925 treaty, the commission has the legal authority to demand removal of any structure that encroaches within 10 feet of the border from either side.

In early 2007, a boundary commission engineer visited the Leus to warn them that their wall was 2 feet or 3 feet inside the boundary vista and would have to be removed. A few weeks later, Schornack himself stopped by, accompanied by his Canadian counterpart, to hand the Leus a written notice giving them 45 days to have the wall removed.

The case attracted the attention of the Pacific Legal Foundation, a property rights advocacy group. Foundation attorneys agreed to represent the Leus for free, and filed the lawsuit asking a federal judge to stop the boundary commission from removing the wall. The lawsuit contends that the commission is violating the couple’s property rights and going beyond its legal authority under the treaty. Then things got complicated.

In a telephone interview, Schornack said he expected the Justice Department to back him up and defend his legal authority to demand the removal of the Leus’ wall. Instead, Schornack said, department lawyers subjected him to “almost unbearable pressure” to approve some kind of settlement that would be favorable to the Leus.

“They indicated to me they had an ideological agenda and that agenda did not match up with the boundary commission’s agenda and the national security agenda,” Schornack said. “I could not trust them. … Instead of backing me up, they cut me down.”

As he sees it, Bush administration officials are putting property rights ideology ahead of the national security benefits of maintaining a clear international boundary.

Feldman said he too got the idea that the Justice Department was more interested in property rights than in upholding the commission’s authority to keep the border clear.

Jeebus, it’s three damn feet into an inconsequential twenty foot-wide buffer zone. These guys at the IBC really need to find something better to do.

Hell, I’d like to see a few thousand Americans move along the 49th and wall off their property to create a border wall. I’d even support tax breaks for those who did.

Then we can take the experiment down south.