Border Walls, Redux
Sometimes a Good Idea, Sometimes Not.
Now that the Biden administration has announced they will add to existing barriers along the U.S.-Mexican border, I expect a cacophony of complaint and condemnation to ensue. Republicans will either scoff that Biden has come around to realizing Trump was right, or they'll do their own about face and insist border walls are an awful idea. Some Democrats and others on the left will call it a betrayal.
So, some walls are bad ideas and some aren’t. It just depends. What isn't a good idea is building a wall as a political gimmick, as Donald Trump did. It is also a mistake to insist you’ll never build another foot of the border wall, as President Biden did during his campaign.
Joe Biden offered an explanation today for his about face. His hands were tied by border wall funds that were appropriated by Congress, which he had tried—without success—to repurpose. His explanation was at some odds with his Homeland Security Secretary, who said last night that the reversal was due to a recent surge. Both can be, and likely are, true.
I'll reiterate points I made a few years back (see article here). Border walls, or fences, may be a good idea if they are in the right place and are part of a comprehensive program that includes intelligence and surveillance systems, personnel to patrol the border, immigration judges to adjudicate asylum petitions, intelligently developed and administered worker visa programs, and foreign assistance programs to ameliorate conditions that cause people to flee their homes.
Walls or fences by themselves always fail.
Solid thoughts again, Denis. As I learned very early in my military career, an obstacle without human-eyes-on-target is just a nuisance. I like to think of the border/immigration issue as THE exemplar of all that is wrong with American politics. To wit:
Walls work. They may be inhumane (see the Iron Curtain or the DMZ), but they work. They're expensive to staff and maintain, but they work. Yet some liberals claim "Walls don't work." Now you might want to respond, "well we're not going to shoot everybody are we?" but that is not the only approach. If everybody who scaled the wall got sent back to where they started, word would get out.
GOP business interests secretly want the cheap labor unrestricted immigration allows. They are aligned (incredibly enough) with some open borders progressives who believe everybody who wants to should be given asylum.
Our national policies on asylum and refugees have taken the basic idea of helping those in need to encouraging those in want. That can't work, unless you're New Zealand.. We need a rational system that favors those most likely to succeed in America along with contingency quota for emergencies. Period.
Trump said he would build a great big beautiful wall, so Biden had to claim he would not build another foot. Both equally stupid comments. The WH Spokes claimed today they had to spend the money because of appropriations law, while the DHS Secretary said it was an emergency necessity, then wait, no it wasn't. Except he also waived environmental limits, which of course could have prevented the construction indefinitely. Clown show activity.
And while the DeSantis and Abbott political stunts with sending migrants to big cities was just that, it did highlight the incongruity of sanctuary cities who don't want to be sanctuaries, really.
Everybody knows immigration and the border are a disaster. There are solutions, but both sides would rather play politics then even try to fix it.