A similar trend toward superlatives continues today in the debate over border security. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi disagrees with President Trump’s push for “a wall” or “steel barrier” or whatever it may be called; and that’s fine – political differences mark our debates, whether over Obamacare, or tax rates, or the wall. But the Speaker is not satisfied by opposing the wall, she must characterize it as “immoral” or “ineffective.” Just as those baseball fans did fifty years ago, the Speaker isn’t content with disagreeing with the need for a border fence, she is compelled to declare that the very existence of a barrier is “immoral.”
Just as those fans believed that if their team couldn’t be the best, it had to be the worst, so the Speaker’s visceral displeasure with the President has warped her perspectives to such a degree that a wall or barrier must be “the worst thing ever,” even though walls and barriers clearly have provided protection in thousands of instances over thousands of years. Suddenly, if the President wants one, it must be “immoral.”
The truth is that a border wall is neither ineffective nor immoral. The level of illegal entry at those places where walls and barriers have been built is much less than at places where there are none. Sure, a significant amount of the illegal immigrant problem arises from visa overstays, or from marriage fraud, or “chain migration,” “birthright citizenship,” or other causes, and “a wall” would have little effect on them. But those issues can be addressed specifically, regardless if there is a barrier or not.
Sure, the $5.6 billion that the President wants for a wall is a lot of money, but it pales beside the roughly $100 billion we spend each year on illegal immigrants. If we could save $100 billion in expenses by spending $5 billion on a wall, that would be a very practical expenditure.
And as the news begins to churn with reports of a “new caravan” forming in Honduras, intending to march across Mexico and demand to be allowed to enter into the United States, and we have additional news reports each week about some American citizen or legal immigrant killed by an illegal one, the claims that this all is “a manufactured crisis,” that illegal immigration is not a problem, ring more hollow than ever.
Speaker Pelosi does not want a wall. What then does she offer as a solution, “open borders” or unrestricted access? An immigration hearing for everyone who sets one toe across the border? Having local authorities refuse to cooperate with ICE? Spending hundreds of billions of dollars to house, feed, educate, care for and support people who come here with no health checks, documentation, background investigations, sponsors, job prospects, or clearances? She opposes the wall, but she can’t really believe that “no wall at all” is a viable response to the situation. Or can she?