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Tuesday, August 8, 2017

The Border Patrol by John Oliver

Oliver is back from vacation and his latest is an expose on the US Border Patrol.  Interesting piece.  I learned a few things.

Yes, I can believe that it's a pretty boring job.  Dangerous, too.  Not sure what to think about the charges of poor hiring practices and corruption.  And what about the Northern border?  Same or different issues?

I would love to hear your take on it.



5 comments:

Ellen Lebelle said...

I always watch John Oliver. I try to watch the YouTube video as soon as I can, before the show is shown on OCS 24, here.

WordsPoeticallyWorth said...

Greetings from the UK.

Thank you. Love love, Andrew. Bye.

Ed in rural Ontario said...

Living near the northern border (on the Canadian side) I found Mr Oliver's piece both frightening and enlightening. The frightening part is that agents are often transferred between borders, so we will inevitably see our share of poorly trained and (possibly) corrupt agents selected for the southern border but rotated to the northern border.

It explains a few experiences at the northern border - particularly a decade or so ago - when the agents were clearly ill-trained, unfamiliar with the country they were posted next too, and quite rude from a Canadian perspective. In my eyes, just another reason to treat the US as flyover country.

The reality is that there is much less stress on the northern border, and the US is much more frequently the exporter of problems (guns, drugs, crime, illegal crossings) to Canada rather than crossings from Canada to the US.

Tim said...

I think this is a broader symptom of the US having multiple Federal law enforcement agencies of varying levels of prestige. In Canada on the other hand illegal border crossings are part of the RCMP's broader Federal policing powers. Simple put in the US context being a border patrol agent is a quite a bit of a step down in prestige from being an FBI agent whereas in Canada it is basically the same job.

Sauve said...

Thank you!

I was chuckling throughout but I actually LMAO at the last 5-words. OMG!

I am not a fan of Trump now and have never been. When the Republicans lost their minds and chose Trump I knew he would win because Hillary is a female. Americans will vote a male of any species their President if the other opponent is female. Still the minute it was announced that he was the President-elect the one thought that entered my mind was the book and movie The Road. We, and I mean the world, will be lucky if this guy doesn't start a nuclear war. Maybe we will come through this with only another great depression.