Trump’s rivals try to trump him on immigration

Years ago there was a short-lived TV sitcom, the name of which I cannot recall now, that had a deputy sheriff character who was investigating a crime committed by a Canadian. His comical comment was “Those sneaky bastards! They look and sound just like us.” When you’re from Minnesota that line is hilarious, because it happens to be true.

Governor Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to run their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, also sees something nefarious in Canadians who “look and sound just like us.”

Walker, seeking to one-up Donald Trump and his “big, beautiful wall” on the U.S.-Mexico border, said he is open to building a wall along the U.S.- Canada border as well. Scott Walker Open To Building Wall Along Border With Canada:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), a staunch advocate of beefing up security on the southern border, said Sunday he is open to building a wall on the U.S. border with Canada as well.

The Republican presidential candidate said the idea of building a northern wall was brought up to him during a recent town hall in New Hampshire.

“That is a legitimate issue for us to look at,” Walker said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The U.S.- Canada border, officially known as the International Boundary, is the longest international border in the world, some 5,525 miles long including another 1,538 miles shared with Alaska, including maritime boundaries in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic coasts, and the Great Lakes.

You should note that the fear mongering Walker has not really thought his idea through. He certainly has no clue as to whether his wall is even feasible, how much it would cost, or how he would begin to pay for it. And what about all those ships and sailors he is going to have to add to patrol our maritime borders?

Then there  is Governor Chris Christie — is this guy still running? — who topped all of his rivals this weekend by calling for a high-tech update to tattooing identification numbers on the arms of “undesirables.” Chris Christie Proposes Tracking Immigrants the Way FedEx FedEx Tracks Packages:

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said on Saturday that if he were elected president he would combat illegal immigration by creating a system to track foreign visitors the way FedEx tracks packages.

Christie said at a campaign event in New Hampshire that he would ask the chief executive of FedEx, Frederick W. Smith, to devise the tracking system.

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“At any moment, FedEx can tell you where that package is. It’s on the truck. It’s at the station. It’s on the airplane,” Mr. Christie told the crowd in Laconia, N.H. “Yet we let people come to this country with visas, and the minute they come in, we lose track of them.”

He added: “We need to have a system that tracks you from the moment you come in.”

* * *

Mr. Christie did not say specifically how a system would track people the same way packages are tracked by FedEx, which scans a bar code on the package at each step of its delivery.

A FedEx spokeswoman declined to comment on Mr. Christie’s remarks.

I’ll bet! FedEx always has its packages under its control, so all it has to do is scan the bar codes. This is not going to work with illegal immigrants who are not under the control of law enforcement.

What Christie is actually describing is a Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) chip inserted into immigrants when they enter the country to keep track of them. Implant Chip, Track People. The only appropriate response to this is “Holy shit!” (What makes Christie’s proposal even more offensive is that there has been a wingnut conspiracy theory circulating in the fever swamps of wingnuttia about ObamaCare RFID chips for years. ObamaCare Implant: ObamaCare Microchip RFID Myth.)

The RFID chip will not work, for obvious reasons. First of all, illegal entrants are not going to get a RFID chip, they are avoiding law enforcement authorities because they entered the country illegally. Duh! Secondly, the RFID chip can be removed and/or blocked or destroyed in various ways.

Finally, immigrants who are here legally, or even illegally, enjoy civil liberties under the U.S. Constitution. Do we really want to institute a high-tech version of tattooing identification numbers on the arms of “undesirables” like Nazi Germany?

This is what Donald Trump’s overt nativism and racism has done to the GOP field of candidates. Trump’s rivals are trying to trump him on immigration with even more offensive and outrageously extreme anti-immigration proposals.

These candidates have all disgraced themselves to the extent that they have disqualified themselves from consideration for higher office. Just quit now and go.