As a college teacher, I avoid expressing political opinions in class.....but the new semester has not yet started yet, so, here are my comments on the proposed border wall, which is the consuming sticking point on the federal government shutdown.1. Big/long walls are not effective. The full extent of the Berlin Wall required watch towers and guards, and people still got across. The Great Wall of China (I've been there) is really a series of watch towers and an elevated road connecting them, not a barrier. A good extension ladder would get people over The Great Wall pretty easily.
2. A border wall would require intensive guarding. It would cost billions annually for cameras, drones, aircraft, and ground patrols along nearly 2,000 miles of fence. It would require hundreds of not thousands of guards.
3. In spite of that, people WILL find a way over, under, around, or through the wall, when guards happen to NOT be looking. Humans are ingenious, particularly when their lives are in danger.
4. The real cost of The Wall would be $30+ Billion, which that does not include the huge ongoing personal and programmatic costs mentioned in #2 above.
5. The wall would require condemnation of private property and destruction of wildlife sanctuaries. In Texas, at least, one-third of the land needed for the border wall is owned by the federal government or Native American tribes. The rest is owned by states and private property owners, some of it owned before statehood.
6. The proposed wall would violate Christian teaching and whether or not you are Christian, it is hard to defend in terms of ethics and morality, particularly since the focus of stopping people is refugees seeking asylum because their lives are threatened back home.
7. Drugs do not come in via refugees seeking asylum, but rather come hidden in luggage through legal checkpoints, or tunnels, drone flights, etc. Any drug argument related to advocating for the wall is specious.
8. Illegal immigration has been down every year since 2007. I don't like the family separations and internment camps of the Trump administration, but what we have been doing for the last decade is working.
9. Most "illegal immigrants" have been in this country for more than a decade, such as overstaying their visas. A high percentage of them have children who are citizens by birthright.
10. I am sorry, buy I do not trust the president to make wise decisions. His constant logical fallacies, outright lies, and the way his actions reveal his morality have left me feeling that virtually everything he does lacks any semblance of critical thinking. So I am suspicious of his rationale.The conservative Cato Institute says, “President Trump’s wall would be a mammoth expenditure that would have little impact on illegal immigration.”
For the president and the current GOP, the Wall is a symbol of fear that would cost a huge amount of money and would not be effective, because it is not based on evidence or a solid plan.
The better solution is comprehensive and realistic immigration reform, period.
