RF Tags

I like this guy. He is a tanker (like me) in the army (like I was) and he thinks like a tanker. Tankers are generally strange birds, because we don't think like other soldiers. We ride into battle and we don't dig holes. Eight digit grid coordinates (10 meters square)are universally taught in service schools, because if you are calling in artillery you need to know exactly where you are. Tankers use 6 digit grid coordinates (100 meters square) because your tank commands everything within that small area. I once had a battalion commander who came up with a grid reference system that referenced an area 500 meters square, because he thought that a platoon ought to be able to dominate that much terrain. He was right.

Anyway, this company commander in Iraq has come up with the idea of using RF tags (radio frequency tags) on illegal immigrants. His idea is that if you are caught, they implant an RF tag. If you come back into the country, the tag explodes. Problem solved. I love this paragraph:

Illegal immigrants bad. We have to lock down our borders to tightly controlled access points. Minefields, Machine guns, Old-Soviet Era border patrols, rednecks with rifles, whatever it takes. By any means necessary. Freedoms guaranteed within the US constitution end at the border, don’t ya know. Just show up at the airport in Damascus with a name like Silverberg and see if you are not subjected to unreasonable search and seizure. Or try to keep and bear arms in England. Rights are not granted by governments, they are kept from the authority of government. But they are only protected by that government. (It’s the same catch-22 as a soldier watching a US flag getting burned.) If you leave the protection of the gummint, then your rights are subject to review. If you are caught here illegally, the punishment is RF Tagging, a jail term (in a labor co-op), and return to your motherland, or any other foreign country of our choosing (better not get picked up on Rwanda day.) Second offense: remember the RF tag? It esplodes when you cross the border the second time. First timers also lose any chance of earning citizenship; after all, the first thing they did here was break the law.

I don't think this idea has any chance of adoption, but it is certainly creative. I like it.