Justified

     In Jake Moser's blog post "Charge the Troops to your Campaign Fund Instead, Mr. Perry" he writes about Governor Perry's actions to send 1,000 National Guard to the border to alleviate the deficiency of border patrol personnel. In his post he takes a unfavorable stance toward Perry's action. His big focal point for the post was that crime rates have not risen since the crisis, and that the National Guard should only be invoked to help control crime.

     The issue I have with this argument is that, at the time, we didn't know the crime rates were not rising because the entire point of illegal activity on the border is to not get caught. If people are not getting caught then it's obvious that we can't say crime is higher now. With drastically less people patrolling the border (because they are having to care for these children and do a lot a of paper work for them) it's even easier for criminals to not get caught, thus; it means that the rate of crime would not go up because we simply don't know that the crime has happened. The National Guard was invoked to get manpower back to the border to ensure that crime has not increased and that it won't increase in the future. Accordingly, I believe it is short sighted to say, since crime didn't go up we should just wait for the national government to handle it, because if there are deficiencies in the border patrol it would only be a matter of time before the border is taken advantage of. Thus, I believe that Perry's call for the National Guard was justified.