The Border Wall

            "Why We Need it"   

02/01/18

The ongoing discussion about building the border wall has been one of the central issues in American politics since Donald Trump first declared himself a candidate for president. There are a lot of people, mostly conservatives and independents, who are in favor of building the wall. And there are a lot of other people, mostly liberals, who are opposed to it. There are arguments on both sides, but there is only one right answer.

          Those people who are against building the wall are in favor of the status quo. That is, they are in favor of letting more and more illegals into our country. It has been estimated that about 10% of these people are criminals and have come here to do us harm. Thousands of Americans, including police officers, border agents, and defenseless women and children have been flat out murdered or have been killed on our nation’s highways by illegals who were unlicensed, uninsured, and, in some cases, intoxicated. Thousands more have died from the thousands of tons of narcotics, like heroin, fentanyl, meth and cocaine that have been smuggled into our country. To put this bluntly, those of you who are against the wall, are in favor of sacrificing Americans, your own countrymen, for the sake of these illegals. These dead Americans are somebody’s children, or siblings, or your neighbors. They could be “the girl next door,” or someone from your high school class. Have we as Americans become so callous and so uncaring that we would be against putting an end to this? I guess, in this case, the desire for political gain, in the form of more Democratic votes, is more important to those who oppose the wall.

            One of the narratives put out by those who want our southern border to remain unsecure is that illegal aliens pay taxes. This is, for the most part, untrue. According to the Social Security Administration, illegals cannot legally obtain a social security card and therefore cannot legally work in this country. If they are working, they are most likely being paid “under the table” and are not paying taxes.

             What this means, to quote liberal democrats, who are so fond of raising taxes on American citizens, is that these people are not “paying their fair share.” To take it one step further these illegals are taking advantage of the American taxpayer. Their children attend our schools. If they need medical care, they go to the emergency room, get treated and walk out. If I’m not mistaken, Medicaid pays for that. They use our roads and bridges and other infrastructure. They have access to clean, safe, running water which is paid for by local governments. For all this, and more, they pay little or nothing while the American taxpayer foots the bill.  

              Another reason for building the wall is the massive number of these people who have entered our country, and are continuing to enter our country everyday. I recently heard a news program that stated that there are approximately 11 million illegals currently living in our country. I remember hearing that exact same estimate years ago. My guess is that the number of illegal immigrants currently here is far greater than 11 million.

                The president wants roughly $25B to secure the border. This includes building the wall, adding border patrol and increased use of high tech surveillance. Resolving the illegal immigration issue without building the wall, is like putting the horses into the barn and leaving the barn door open. Why bother? Illegals would still be able to enter the US illegally and the problem of illegal immigration would continue unsolved. No solution, including this one, is 100% effective.  But, where walls have been built, they have had a significant impact in reducing the flow of unwanted and uninvited immigrants.

              There are billions of poor people on this planet. For the most part they live in, what we would consider, lawless countries and that have oppressive governments. They would all want to leave and go to a better place, namely the US or Europe. Europe was overrun by refugees from the middle east a few years ago and it turned out to be a disaster. They are still dealing with this situation to this day. If we are not able to secure our borders we will be forced to deal with the  same problems.

                 There is a related issue regarding illegal immigration. Great Britain is on the verge of exiting the EU. As a member nation it was forced to take a certain number of the aforementioned refugees from the middle east. The fact that Britain was forced to take these refugees was one of the reasons they voted to exit the EU. British citizens became concerned that they were losing their identity as a country and they did not want that to happen. In the very near future Great Britain will no longer be a member of the EU. They have voted to remain British. I am in favor of the United States remaining American.

                  Even though we are a nation of immigrants, I fear the same thing could happen here. We have an immigration system that accepts about one million people a year into our country. These people are vetted and go through the legal immigration process, as they should. Putting these people through this process is no guarantee. What happened in San Bernadino a few years ago and New York City last year tells us that. Our immigration system is broken and these illegals know it, and they are taking advantage of it. As if that wasn’t bad enough, our elected officials, especially the ones on the Democratic side, are in favor of letting the status-quo continue. Americans are dying because of their stonewalling.

                  The case for building the wall, in my opinion, is pretty strong. The wall is needed, first and foremost, to protect the American public. American taxpayers are paying through the nose, at multiple levels of government for police protection and we are simply not getting our money’s worth. We have enough bad people here already, we don’t need to import more. The wall is only part of the solution. In addition, we would also need to add more border patrol. I believe the additional number being talked about is roughly 2700 new agents. There would also be increased use of technology.

                   Over the last several years the burden of the rest of the world’s problems have become ours. We are  currently dealing with enough of our own problems nationally and we also have a full plate at the international level. We are the most generous people on this planet, but it seems that no matter how much we give or how many of our people do volunteer work around the world, it is never enough. We are always asked to do more. We can’t afford to support all the poor and indigent people around the world. After all, we are currently about $21T in debt and interest rates are rising. Maybe we’re not as wealthy as the rest of the world thinks.

                   There is another reason which I alluded to above. I want America to remain American.  America was first settled by Western European Judeo-Christian immigrants. Since that time we have welcomed all races and all creeds to our shores. Millions of immigrants have come to our country looking for a better life and for the most part have found it. They assimilated into our culture, learned English, and embraced the American way of life. One other thing that they did was to enter America legally. They didn’t barge into our country uninvited.

                    As a sovereign nation, we have the right to pick and choose who we allow to immigrate into our country. With the exception of the so called Muslim travel ban, which was temporary in nature and did not apply to all Muslim countries, we have been true to that creed. It was put in place as a temporary measure to give our Homeland Security Department and, more specifically, our customs agents time to improve the tools, methods and procedures used in issuing visas to prospective immigrants. The better trained and the better equipped our customs professionals are, the better able they will be to protect our country and its citizens from people who would come here to do us harm.The criteria to immigrate into our country has never been based on race, color or creed and as long as we have a constitution it never will be.

                  The final reason for building the wall is that walls work. No matter what you hear from these biased anti-Trump news anchors or these media personalities, walls work. Basically, these people make it up as they go along. The fact is that there are a couple dozen countries who have actually built or are in the process of building border walls. In addition, there are other countries that are currently in the process of drawing up plans to build a border wall. There are two border walls that come to mind that are working. There is a wall that separates the city of San Diego from Mexico. It’s really more of a fence than a wall, but it has significantly reduced the flow of illegal immigration across that part of our southern border. Another example is the wall erected by Israel to protect its citizens from the suicide bombers who were entering their country from the West Bank. Here again, the wall has, to a large extent, eliminated the problem.

                   As demonstrated by the two examples above, walls do work. Let’s build the border wall and also implement the other border security measures such as, hiring additional border patrol, using drones and other high tech equipment to finally secure our border and start saving American lives.