Weegy: Securing our border with Mexico—the main crossing for undocumented immigrants into the United States—is a vexing challenge. [ Technology—in the form of a “virtual fence” of sensors, cameras, motion detectors, and other sophisticated equipment—is considered to be of the utmost importance in stemming illegal immigration. But problems have plagued the effort for more than two decades, raising questions about whether it can be done effectively.
The outgoing Bush administration last year bequeathed to the incoming Obama team a border security program replete with vast technology problems accompanied by outrageous cost overruns and missed deadlines by the main contractor on the project, Boeing Co. Sadly, the Bush administration proved it had learned little from earlier failures to control undocumented immigration along the border stretching back more than a decade, and showed it had a poor handle at best on government contracting at the thennew Department of Homeland Security. This left the Obama administration’s new team at DHS with a decision about whether to fix the persistent known problems piled high with new ones added by the Bush team or to try something different. ]
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