First of all let me say that I generally oppose the use of the Guard on the border. We have specially trained Border Patrol personnel for this job. If we have too few, pay for more.
On the other hand, leaving aside whether we should have spent the last five years increasing our civilian assets, as a temporary measure until we train and equip more border forces, I could live with it.
Second, annual training is not limited to fifteen days. I was on one for three weeks and I didn't have any choice on it. So we could still get two weeks of service with a week of travel time added on to annual training time.
Third, if the missions were related to the units' missions, this would still be good training. Engineering units could build walls, roads, bridges, and detention facilities; military police could guard detainees; helicopter units could ferry personnel and supplies; transportation units could do the same with trucks; cavalry and infantry units could patrol and report; signal units could set up communications; UAV units could observe the border; and so forth. And all after deploying perhaps thousands of miles. This is all good training.
Finally, I believe this is how we kept troops deployed in Honduras during the 1980s. If we managed to send reservists to Central America on their annual training to support our policies, why can't we send them to the US-Mexican border?
As I say, as a rule I oppose using the Guard for border protection if it is just illegal alien protection. This should be a civilian function. But if we are going to do it, the problems stated aren't necessarily real or insurmountable.
Of course, if the Guard really is going to be "deployed" to file paperwork, this is a horrible idea. Hire some temps for goodness sake, if that's the case.
UPDATE: This article clarifies the Guard role:
President Bush announced Monday that he will send 6,000 National Guard troops to the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, but said the troops will provide intelligence and surveillance support to U.S. Border Patrol agents and will not catch and detain illegal immigrants.
And then I get a really good WTF? feeling from this:
"If there is a real wave of rights abuses, if we see the National Guard starting to directly participate in detaining people ... we would immediately start filing lawsuits through our consulates," Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said in an interview with a Mexico City radio station.
Are they effing kidding me? Is this a joke? File suit if we protect our border?
Look, I'm pretty pro-immigration. As long as it is accompanied by assimilation. America is defined by the idea of freedom and is not a racial/ethnic thing or one based on the land of ancestors. Americans-at-heart live all around the world. And many have come here and have joined us just as my grandparents came here. But I don't pine for the bogs of Ireland with some irredentist fury. St Patrick's Day is a day to wear green and drink beer without guilt. My Hungarian ancestry lives on by me calling my son a "kookoobacha" (which I believe means little crazy one, in an endearing sense).
On the whole and up until now, immigration has been good for us. We are stronger because of past immigration. Is it good now? And at the current rate? And under the current circumstances? Well, that's why we are debating.
But when officials of a foreign country start issuing threats to sue us if we enforce our border crossing laws, I am ready to support digging a moat on our southern border and seeding it with mines. What we decide to do with our border is our damn business.
Hey, would it be rude to suggest a member of the Kennedy family drive each and every illegal immigrant across the Rio Grande?
ANOTHER UPDATE: This interview with lieutenant general Steven Blum confirms that the bulk of the Guard force will be reservists on their usual annual training of 2 or 3 weeks led by a cadre of long-term headquarters that will coordinate the units moving into and out of the border:
Well, it would work in a combination of ways. There would be a duration force. There would be people there from the effected states, from the Joint Force Headquarters of the National Guard in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas that would be there for the duration and they would coordinate and plan and synchronize all the efforts of these National Guardsmen that would come in for shorter periods of time.
You wouldn’t be meeting a new commander every week and you wouldn’t be making a new relationship with the Border Patrol and the Immigration people.
What you would be is, for instance the heavy equipment operator, the bulldozer operator that’s building a barrier or a fence or a road, or an engineer. He or she may be there for two weeks to three weeks and then go back home so that it fits their normal National Guard model that they’re used to. They know every Guardsman is going to have to get together for training for anywhere between two and three weeks every year. We call this annual training. The employers of the civilian citizen soldiers and airmen expect it and so do their families and they plan for it.
I'm not sure how much 6,000 troops will help, but it won't hurt the border situation and it certainly won't undermine training and readiness. If anything, it will increase readiness because of the distances involved, the real world environment, the practical goals, and even the low chance of violence that will keep the reservists a little more on their toes.
