In Texas, Little Support for Putting Up Fences [View All]

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"That's just a big waste of money," said Vickers, a Texas Republican activist who heads a group opposed to illegal immigration that until recently was the state branch of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.
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Many expressed shock that a proposal they considered a pipe dream by pandering Washington politicians had been approved, and that a fence they likened to the Berlin Wall could soon separate them from their neighbors.

"For so many years, we talked about tearing down that wall. Now we want to build a wall between us and Mexico? It makes us look like hypocrites," said Denise Carreon, 21, who like many border residents still had family members to the south.

Many others expressed outrage that the Rio Grande, a near-mystical river in the Texas imagination and one of the most prized bird-watching spots in North America, could soon be blocked from view.

"Zero — that's how many people I know who support this. People are opposed from Brownsville to El Paso," said Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster, head of a group of frontier leaders called the Texas Border Coalition.
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Ray M. Keck III, the president of Texas A&M International University in Laredo, said the idea of building a wall to deter immigrants ignored the lessons of history, which clearly showed that such barriers do not work unless they are patrolled by soldiers willing to kill.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-border1oct01,0,2480408.story?coll=la-home-nation