Obsession with a Wall

The news media seems to be currently occupied with the supposed political debate over a wall – an imposing physical barrier – designed to deter and prevent the movement of a people across the nation’s southern border. Of course, the length of this border – nearly 2000 miles – is so extensive that the barrier required would be exorbitantly expensive to adequately build and maintain to the level required to make it an effective deterrent.

In my mind, this monstrosity is seen by its proponents as a sensible solution to the persistent and dogged attempts made by many desperate individuals and families to find a better life for themselves in the United States. It should be noted that emigrating to a new place and alien culture effectively leaving behind all that is known and familiar is a decision that is not easily come by. Anyone in this country with ancestors that have made such a journey from many and divergent regions of this planet have heard the stories of the extensive sacrifices that were required to do this. In many ways, this country was built by the exhausting and unrelenting labor of immigrants.

This wall is seen by some as a legitimate response to a nagging problem essentially created by the very real economic differences between a prosperous nation and its exceedingly impoverished neighbors who are mostly driven by an unquenchable desire to escape oppression and find a more hopeful life for themselves and especially their offspring. Of course, among the vast majority of these thoroughly innocent people are those motivated by nefarious reasons. It is quite possible, that the underlying motivation to build this wall is to delay or deter an inevitable change in the nation’s demographics that will effectively result in whites no longer being the majority population.

This wall, however, is no solution; it is no substitute for a rational and reasoned national policy that would ordinarily come from free and open debate and resulting in a thorough reform of immigration law.