The Truth About Walls

The Truth About Walls
The View from the Middle

I’m amazed at how our politicians in Washington can lie right to our faces and do it with “academy award winning” fake sincerity. The new line in Washington, especially on the left, is that, “Walls are a 15th century solution to a 21st century problem and they just don’t work.” Almost that entire statement is a lie except for the reality that we do have an illegal immigration problem in the 21st century. It’s like the “big lie” that Joseph Goebbels used in the second World War to peddle his genocidal, mass murder plans to the German people as a righteous response to what he suggested the Jews did in WWI. Don’t be fooled. Let me reveal some truths about walls that will shed light on the big lie.

First, the wall is not a 15th century idea. They were first used over 4,000 years ago or about the year 2,000 BC. They can’t even get that fact right. They have been used ever since for one big reason - they work, which we will demonstrate later. They also subtly suggest that if an idea is old, it can’t possibly work today. Another lie. The wheel, for example was invented over 5,000 years ago and still works remarkably well today. Anyone want to take the wheels off their cars, bikes, roller-skates or scooters today? The door lock was invented over 6,000 years ago and is still in broad use today. In fact, they are almost everywhere. Want to take the locks off your house? Probably not.

The wall, the wheel and the lock were classic, game changing ideas because they worked and they still work today. 65 countries around the world TODAY use walls on their borders to protect their sovereignty and help them manage their legal immigration programs, because they work.

Israel, for example put a 150-mile wall on their southern border to stop people from illegally entering their country. They saw an almost immediate decline in illegal crossings by 99%. Walls work. Hungary put up a wall on its border with Serbia in 2015 because illegal entries across that border had exploded to 391,000 per year. Within two years, illegal crossings had fallen to just over 1,000. That’s a 99.8% reduction. Walls work. Even in the United States, NPR reported that the wall between San Diego and Tijuana had reduced illegal entries into the US there by 95%. Walls work. It is a part of the “big lie” to deny this.

Another part of the big lie is that Trump is suggesting a 2,000-mile-long wall across our southern border. To the average person, that sounds excessive and even impractical. The reality is that we already have 700 miles of walls and or fences across our southern border and the current administration is only asking for an additional 550 miles in strategic places to bring that total to 1,250 miles of walls.

But let’s not listen to politicians concerning the need for this additional border wall mileage. Let’s listen to the people that do the work of protecting our border. According to The Washington Times, the National Border Control Council overwhelmingly supported Trump’s plan for additional wall systems in strategic places on our border with Mexico. In fact, 89% of the agents support this proposal while only 7% disagreed. Oh, by the way, this group also opposed our current “catch and release” policy.

There is another aspect of the “big lie”, and that is what politicians won’t tell you. Did you know, for example, that 26 Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, voted in favor of the 2006 Secure Fence Act, which approved hundreds of miles of additional fencing/walls along our southern border. That bill passed by a whopping 80 to 19 margin in the Senate that year. Schumer, Clinton and Obama also supported the 2013 immigration reform law that approved walls and fences along our Mexican border. Their objections today are purely political. Illegal immigration has been an issue for decades and they don’t want Trump to solve it, even if it will benefit the entire country to do so.

I’ll be the first to admit that walls and fences along our southern border are not the total answer to our illegal immigration problems. We need to embrace technology, stop catch and release, change chain migration, improve our work visa program and punish employers here who enable and even encourage illegal immigration. But, to suggest that a strategically placed wall system is not part (a big part) of the solution is a “big lie”. Don’t fall for the lies. The truth will set you free.