Chris Christie Wants Barcodes For Foreigners, Just Like You Know Who

When You Absolutely, Positively Need To Improve Your Poll Numbers Overnight

Sad Bayonne hound Chris Christie offered a novel way to crack down on illegal immigration, which the 2016 Republican primary voters all agree is the greatest crisis in the world (apart maybe from Benghazi). Oh, sure, maybe a 300-foot wall built out of sharks and tigers, with drones and lasers and exploding anchor baby birth certificates is a good start, but how about the people who fly over the wall on an airplane (even if Donald Trump doesn't believe in their existence)? In a speech in New Hampshire, Saturday, Christie explained that since the private sector is so good at keeping tabs on the location of packages, maybe we should get FedEx to keep track of all the foreigners in the country, so that when some Messican from Guatemala overstays their visa, we can easily send them back to the Amazon for a refund (little South o' the Border joke for you there).

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“At any moment, FedEx can tell you where that package is. It’s on the truck. It’s at the station. It’s on the airplane,” Mr. Christie told the crowd in Laconia, N.H. “Yet we let people come to this country with visas, and the minute they come in, we lose track of them.”

He added: “We need to have a system that tracks you from the moment you come in.”

Christie has clearly given this some thought, if by "given this some thought" you mean "imagined how cool it would be while he played with toy drones and MRAPS in a sandbox." In Christie's "Your Papers, Please" vision of the future, American Liberty would involve a lot of barcodes and data banks, but only for foreigns of course, not a police state at all!

"However long your visa is, then we go get you," Mr. Christie said. "We tap you on the shoulder and say, 'Excuse me. Thanks for coming. Time to go.'"

And then maybe as the system is perfected, they could just push a button and a rocket in your pants would shoot you right out of the country, zing! 

On Fox News Sunday, Christie clarified that, yes, he knows people are not packages, jeez, do you have to take everything he says and twist it? And then he repeated how very cool the idea was, because it is a good idea and it is his idea and he is smart for thinking of it:

"This is once again a situation where the private sector laps us in the government with the use of technology," Christie said. "We should bring in the folks from FedEx to use the technology to be able to do it. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I don’t mean people are packages, so let’s not be ridiculous."

Someone may have pointed out to Christie that one of the reasons FedEx is really good at knowing where his package is (HA HA, we just made you think about Chris Christie's "package"!) might have something to do with the fact that it involves a closed system of trucks and planes and warehouses that are all owned by FedEx or its subcontractors, and that it involves scanning barcodes that are physically attached to the package, a feature that many visitors on work or student visas might object to.

Still, leave it to the Party of Individual Liberty to propose an immigration enforcement regime that would involve extensive location monitoring and surveillance, all for the sake of enforcing civil penalties. We're guessing that Donald Trump may well thank Christie for the suggestion, upgrade it to forcing all foreigns to wear a GPS ankle bracelet when they arrive, and maybe while we're at it the devices could be packed with explosives that will take off visitors' legs if they're not out of the country before their Visa expires. Then Trump would say it was his idea in the first place and Christie stole it.

Ideas are fun, aren't they? If nothing else, it should be fun seeing how the Mark of the Beast crowd reacts to this one. On the one hand, it's got barcodes and government monitoring of people's movements, but on the other hand, it's aimed at tracking foreigners, so maybe it's OK. Say, you know who else thought it would be a good idea to attach a code number to people in order to keep track of them?

[ NYT / Mediaite ]