"Come on in, the water's fine"

With respect to the illegal immigration debate and this country's ruling class's pledge to actually enforce the border, their actions eventually betray their words.

A government agency on the front lines of the immigration debate has begun installing lifesaving buoys in a fast-moving canal along the U.S.-Mexico border where migrants drown each year as they sneak into the country illegally.

The debate over the lifelines has long presented authorities with a moral dilemma: Is it acceptable to do nothing when so many immigrants are dying in the water? Or do lifesaving devices lull immigrants into a false sense of security that they can conquer the channel while giving them extra motivation to enter the country illegally?

The agency that manages the canal had waffled on those questions as board members worried aloud that the buoys would encourage illegal immigration. But the Imperial Irrigation District reversed course in August and has been bolting 105 lines across the 82-mile desert canal at a cost of $1.1 million. Crews are also planting 1,414 bilingual signs on canal banks that read, "Warning: Dangerous Water."

There was scant discussion about the sudden change of heart, but the catalyst appears to be a CBS "60 Minutes" report that portrayed the agency as indifferent and callous on the buoy issue.

Awesome. So it was a ruling class collaborative effort to aid and abet illegal and dangerous activity.

The linked article states the canal has claimed about 500 deaths since it was built back in 1942 to bring water to the farmers in the Imperial Valley east of San Diego. Further north, the Kern River flowing west out of the southern Sierra Nevadas has claimed lives at roughly the same annual rate (238 between 1968 and 2007) but we don't see any efforts to install lifelines or buoys... we just get the signs.

In keeping with the spirit of preserving national sovereignty and not being accomplices to illegal and unsafe behavior, perhaps we should give the All-American Canal the same treatment as the Kern with a simple warning...

NO CRUZES EL RIO