Opinionated soundbites: The border fence

• Two New Jersey mayors participating in an immigration discussion at Princeton University yesterday agreed that the U.S.-Mexico border fence is "a waste of taxpayer money".
• Meanwhile, an eloquent reader of a central Illinois newspaper wrote an editor's letter yesterday in which he said that securing the border is necessary before considering immigration reform.
• A small California newspaper's editorial yesterday read: "No matter how much money is thrown at securing the fence on the border between the U.S. and Mexico (...) illegal immigration is as American as baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet."
• And yet another newspaper reader, this time one of the Washington Post, today writes: "The idea of doing border enforcement first and then addressing the other matters is a formula for making certain the other matters are never addressed, because sufficient political trade-offs would no longer be available."