We have been told by Nancy Pelosi that “Most of us (Democrats), speaking for myself, consider the wall immoral, ineffective and expensive”. “We have a responsibility, all of us, to secure our borders, …, but we do so by honoring our values, as well”. Let’s look at values that could make this wall immoral. I am assuming that the values she is talking about is being inclusive and helping those less fortunate than us. We are putting our neighbors face to a barrier that says that we don’t like you and don’t want to cooperate with you, and want nothing to do with you. Does a wall do that? Or can a person, a business, or a nation be inclusive, help the needy and cooperate with others while still guarding what is theirs? Of course, they can. The wall then becomes a projection of the bigotry of those criticizing. Would we feel the same if Canada put up a wall as they have proposed in the past?
What is immoral is encouraging thousands of the poor, uselessly march thousands of miles just for some others to make political gains, and make them wait homeless for an absolutely necessary process that could have taken place while they were in their homes. What is immoral, is overloading a system that knowingly cannot accommodate them, cramming them up against a border and not offering any help, but instead encouraging this all to happen. Of women and children, young men and gang members, who do you think would have the greatest chance of getting across the border legally or illegally? What is immoral is to flood the job market with low wage workers so that those here legally have to work for less. Yes, we do want to keep Tijuana on that side of the border, not because it is Mexican but because the US is a better place to be and we (including all the immigrants) want to keep it that way. That is why we are here. What is immoral is bigots like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schummer to ruthlessly use these people to gain more money and power and then turn around and blame others for being immoral.
As far as being ineffective, just look at other border walls. Israel’s illegal immigration went from 50,000 per year without a wall to 0 in just 3 years. Hungary’s illegal immigration declined 99% in 3 days and has stayed level from that day on. The point of a wall is to slow down the rate of illegal immigration, not stop it completely. If just one person is stopped, then it is effective. The only question is how do we make it more effective. We need a sieve that only allows people through where they can be properly processed, like a freeway that only allows people to cross over at controlled overpasses and underpasses which regulate the flow, both along and across. We do not need or even want tens of thousands every day coming in without regulation. If we need a certain amount of immigration, let it be through a spigot to control the flow. Coming across the Canadian border makes you feel like you were coming to a special place, a new country. Border crossing can and should be a good and rewarding experience.
Then there is the cost. California spends more in one year on services to illegal immigrants that the entire 1,000 miles of wall would cost. We can’t afford NOT to build it and if it is to be a permanent part of our country, why wouldn’t we spend the money we need to build a big beautiful wall, like the 1600 mile Great Wall of China. Maybe it should be a freeway that goes from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. I would like to travel on that even if it was a toll road. Maybe it should be a high-speed train, but not to Las Vegas? There is a freeway that goes from Tijuana to Mexicali and beyond, how did we afford that. There is a new bridge that spans the canyon in front of the Hoover Dam. How did we afford that? Did we regret how much Mount Rushmore or the White House cost? Should the Washington Monument or even more recently the Viet Nam Memorial have been made with plaster instead of Marble or Granite? Why couldn’t this be something that we could be proud of like the Golden Gate Bridge or the Statue of Liberty?
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