In what is obviously a textbook example of art imitating life,
President Bush signed the Secure Fences Act of 2006 five months
before the television show Lost introduced its high-frequency
sonar fence. One was a government-funded fence to keep brown
people out; the other was a privately-funded fence to keep a
black smoke monster out. One was dubbed a “virtual fence” using
experimental technology to combine cameras, radar, and sensors;
the other was fiction. Despite the somewhat amateurish, Dharma
Initiative-esque efforts of groups like Minuteman Civil Defense
Corps and the American Border Patrol to build fences and patrol
our borders as private citizens, securing our borders is
obviously a responsibility of the federal government. And since
83% of Republicans say that “border control is the top priority
of any immigration reform effort,” Republicans clearly want the
federal government actively securing our borders. Traditionally,
calls to secure our borders focused on illegal immigration and
on the flow of il