The US southern (land) border is about 2000 miles long, about one third of it is “protected” by some sort of physical barrier (fence, wall, etc.).
Why is there not a barrier along the entire border? Because the people in charge of border security for the past 100 years have not believed that a physical barrier was worth the expense of land acquisition, construction, maintenance, and constant patrolling that would be necessary to make it effective.
Enhanced border security is better achieved by a layered defense that includes electronic surveillance, drones, increased patrols, monitoring of choke points, and enhanced cooperation with Mexican authorities.
A more significant impact would be achieved by reforming and strengthening our immigration system, which, I can tell you from personal experience (my wife is a German citizen and a permanent resident in the United States), is badly broken. (Fun fact: the two most recent Congressional attempts at reforming and strengthening our immigration system were defeated by House Republicans in 2006 and 2013).
The wall is political theater. It is an issue that resonates with a core group that is highly supportive of President Trump. He picks at this scab to encourage and fire up his “base.” (“Promises made, promises kept,” and all that…) No wall will remove any of the 11 million or so people who are here illegally, and no wall will prevent additional people from coming here legally and overstaying their visas, which is how the majority of illegal immigrants got here in the first place. And no wall will change the underlying reasons why people risk their lives to come here. Keep in mind that people die trying to get here all the time. (Another fun fact: In 1995 I was Assistant Operations Officer at JTF-160 in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where we operated refugee camps for about 40,000 Cuban and Haitian migrants, who risked their lives on homemade rafts, massively overloaded skiffs, oils drums lashed together, and, in a few cases, walking through a minefield for a chance to get to the United States…) No wall is going to stop these people.
The administration doesn’t talk about reforming our immigration system, which could make an actual difference, because that kind of bipartisan policy development is difficult, time -consuming, requires an understanding of the complex issues involved, and doesn’t readily lend itself to chants of “Build that wall” at political rallies.
The opposite of the wall is not “open borders.” That is a false construct that is extraordinarily counterproductive, except as a political tool to further divide an already-fractured electorate.
It’s Christmas. We should give it a rest. There is no policy solution to a “problem” that provides such an obvious political benefit to a segment of a political party, and any attempt to discuss this wildly political idea as if it is some kind of serious policy proposal is utterly senseless.
Merry Christmas, everybody.
December 22, 2018