Who needs a border wall? We don’t. The president wants to erect a dividing line between our country and Mexico, and he is so stubborn about it, he is willing to put people’s lives at risk and hold our congress at bay to do it. The government has been shut down for awhile now, and federal employees are about to go hungry, our national parks turn into refuse dumps (due to no cleanup crews) and the comfort of democracy riddled with holes.
We’ve been around for over 200 years and never closed off a single acre. People came in and went out, and things in general were peaceful. Good fences make good neighbors, the saying goes, but not always. We are not that far away from the day the Berlin Wall came down. Before that day (November 9, 1989), people were shot trying to reach one side or the other. The wall didn’t keep people out; guards with guns kept people living within. It made Germany into two prisons. America is not a prison; we have them, but they are supposed to be for the morally displaced who have been selected to change their ways there by the criminal justice system, not the entire citizenry.
We have a border with Canada, and nobody sees them traipsing over into our territory illegally. We don’t have anything for them, so maybe we need to not have anything to offer on our southernmost border, to discourage illegal entry.\
I have been a proponent of an international record of birth (IRB) to serve as a document for newborns to non-American citizen parents, so their native country can register them as citizens at another time. This would prevent an overabundance of children who, by virtue of their mothers giving birth on a plot of land within the USA, might otherwise be misidentified as Americans when they should probably be citizens of another country. In the name of diplomacy, other countries should be able to recognize their own new members. Really, don’t we only have so much room here? As far as a border goes, no constructed barrier makes a difference to people who are desperate for a life someplace not where they were before. They climb, tunnel under or force their way through. A wall won’t prevent that, but actions might.
We don’t need a border wall. We need to help the border states establish better working parameters, find our indigent residents jobs and tighten labor laws. If what is in front of you does not look better, you can still turn around and find green grass if you only look for it. We should encourage the president to stop the stubbornness and get our government back in business and forget the wall.
Susan's Scribblings the Blog 