As a lifetime Southern Californian, I am pretty familiar with the “wall” at the Mexican border. It’s been there since I was a kid and my parents used to take us to our vacation house in Ensenada. It looks pretty intimidating to me; not something that one could jump or climb over without a 20′ ladder. It has definitely deterred me from illegally entering Mexico.
And, yet, to hear tell, that border leaks like a sieve.
There are holes in it, there are tunnels under it, and in some places there is no wall at all…where evil Latinos can casually stroll across the invisible border. Cesar Millan, the “Dog Whisperer” illegally immigrated to the U.S. many years ago by crawling underneath Interstate 5 through a flood control culvert.
“We need a Wall!”, insists our President.
According to what I’ve read (from security folks), most illegal immigration passes right through the existing guarded border checkpoints. That makes sense to me, because 99 percent of the automobiles crossing the border in Tijuana are uninspected. The Border Patrol officers politely ask questions about your nationality, the purpose of your visit, and if you’re bringing any fruit and vegetables with you. If you’re puffing on a joint when the officer approaches your window, you might be shuttled off to an inspection lane.
However, I’ve made many trips to/from Mexico over the generations, through the Tijuana border crossing, and a Border Patrol officer has yet to ask me the obvious question, “Are there any Mexican nationals or Al Queda terrorists in the trunk of your car?”
Fox News has plenty of stock footage of migrants walking or wading (at the Rio Grande) across the un-walled border, demonstrating conclusively to their audience the obvious problem. However, most real experts say that the vast majority of Mexican tresspassers traverse the existing border crossing concealed in cars and trucks. So, the border wall could be solid concrete, 100′ high, and topped with machine gun-wielding SWAT troopers…and still not resolve that particular illegal immigration problem.
A bigger problem regarding undocumented Americans would be the folks who are in America legally courtesy of a visa and then simply over stay their visa when it expires. A “big, beautiful wall”, to use the President’s descriptor, would not deter this illegal behavior.
Many people, including the President’s wife, obtained residency status in America by fraudulently obtaining their visa in the first place. Melania Trump didn’t have to scale a wall; she flew over the border in a jet airplane. But, that’s OK with Donald Trump, because she’s of Nordic ancestry. Same applies to her parents, who later “chain-migrated” to the U.S., something that the President publicly rails about.
(I suppose that it’s OK because (a) they’re not Mexicans, and (b) Donald Trump sponsored them. But, it’s is confusing to those of us who don’t understand the issue like the President does.)
So, anyway, why spend untold billions of dollars building more border walls?
Maybe it would just make some people feel better? Yeah… the hardcore racists who are the core of President Trump’s political base.
I’ve recently relocated from Southern California to Mesquite, Nevada. I live in a rapidly-growing community, where thousands of homes are being built every year. In fact, there are four homes being built in our neighborhood, surrounding our house.
Not that it is unusual in the Western states, but every guy teaming up to construct these homes is Hispanic, from the framers to the roofers to the electricians to the plumbers to the painters to the landscapers, etc. Most of them speak broken English and entertain themselves while working listening to Spanish-language music stations on their boomboxes.
Occasionally, a project manager will show up to check the plans or inspect the work. These guys are invariably Caucasian specimens; i.e. lily White guys who, likely, look alot like the fellows at “corporate”. The developer of our community is Pulte Homes, formerly Del Webb, one of the nation’s largest builders of leisure communities, home-based in Atlanta, Georgia.
The building activity here in Mesquite is much like that in Southern California, with the workforce predominantly made up of Spanish-speaking laborers…all of them legal, I’m sure.
There have been a few
But, they are not unusual, in the least. In the California agricultural economy, almost 100 percent of the laborers are recent Hispanic arrivals with various degrees of documentation. Their employers are almost 100 percent Caucasian owners of agribusinesses, very conservative in nature, and big contributors to the Republican Party. They’re MAGA people.
So, what are we, the American public, supposed to make of all this trumped-up fuss about building impenetrable walls at our border? Do we really need them?
Well, Mick Mulvaney, who was recently promoted by President Trump to be White House
Isn’t it funny how things change: this week, Mr. Mulvaney can’t say enough nice things about Trump’s Wall!
The obvious answer is No, we don’t need no F’ing walls, because most people who are in this country illegally didn’t scale a wall or simply walk across the unwalled border. And, besides, American businesses and commerce, in general, needs low paid, hard workers to thrive. President Trump, the hotel entrepreneur, understands this. Our Mexican amigos do the blue collar work our patriotic citizens used to do, they do it cheap, and they’re happy to be working. (That’s why they come North, folks.)
Maybe our red-blooded ‘Merican boys got soft?
The reality about President’s “Wall” preoccupation is that, because most Americans understand that it is not necessary, there is simply not political support for using tax dollars to fund it. Trump knows that, and so did the Republican majority House of Representatives and the Senate, which did not make wall construction a priority in the 2017 and 2018 Federal Budgets.
Candidate Trump knew this back in 2016, when he insisted that Mexico would pay for his wall. That didn’t happen, of course, so now the President is blaming Democrats for torpedoing his grand idea. Actually, Democratic opposition is remarkably similar to that of the Republicans, who wouldn’t make it a priority, either.
The frustrated President, who hasn’t had many successes over the past few years, seems to have decided that he’s either going to bully American into The Wall That Isn’t Needed or he’s going to die trying. In an infantile gesture that has infuriated both political parties, Trump has now shut down portions of the government and rescinded pay raises for Federal workers.
Yesterday, he raised the possibility that he will invoke a National State of Emergency declaration to justify having the Army build his precious border Wall.
The guy has no shame…and no understanding of our country.
How times have changed. We are a country of immigrants, a country that welcomed the Trump family as they immigrated from Germany to America, probably sailing past the Statue of Liberty into New York, to later find fame and fortune. We’re the country whose President (Reagan) implored the Soviet Union to “Tear down those walls!”, and they did, uniting the two Germanys.
Now we got a President who wants to keep people out of our country, who wants his legacy to be a monstrous Wall that is offensive to the very idea of the American “melting pot”, a forward-looking humanitarian concept which, truly, made America great and noble in the eyes of the world.
Now, we’re a laughingstock, with a idiot running the asylum.
God help us.