Off-fence-ive Walls

Liberals seem to hate walls.  When I was a student at Wesleyan, there was one area of campus in which the majority of laptop thefts occurred.  This area happened to be student housing that bordered low-income housing projects.  That's not to suggest that the residents in that area were responsible for all (or any) of the thefts (there was poor lighting there and easy escape routes), but when someone suggested building a wall between the two areas, all hell broke loose.  You see, the wall would represent something that was more than a wall.  It would represent class separation or a "stay out of OUR area" mentality.  It didn't matter that there were students at the University tutoring children in that bordering community.  All that mattered was that wall and its perceived symbolism.  And the thefts?  Those were an afterthought.  Surely a wall couldn't fix that problem.  Logical arguments have little value to people whose arguments are based almost entirely in emotion.

Roughly ten years later, here we are on a National scale trying to fix our illegal immigration problem, and Donald Trump's idea of immigration reform is building a wall along the entire southern border and deporting all of the illegal immigrants.  So in this case, the wall would not be merely be symbolic, but would be an actual way to keep "those people" out of "our area."  Really, it's not the wall part that's such a bad idea.  It's the part about deporting everyone who is here illegally.  That is an expensive and sometimes heartbreaking task, but it is also an unfruitful one because, as Ben Carson pointed out, unless we secure our borders first, it accomplishes nothing.

Carson's views on immigration may not be popular, inside or outside of the Republican party, but they make an awful lot of sense.  I would expect that coming from an intelligent, thoughtful, and humble candidate like himself.  We're not ignoring the fact that these illegal immigrants are breaking the law by being here, or by not paying taxes.  And we are not ignoring the fact that some (though not a majority, Mr. Trump) of them break other laws by acting violently and selling drugs (and those people need to be prosecuted and not allowed to live free in our land).  But we need to find some way to deal with those people who are here to work and make better lives for them and their families.  While I don't believe full amnesty is the answer, certainly finding ways for those who are here for the right reasons to be here legally is a good way to go.  Work visas, pathways to citizenship... These are some good ideas that need to be considered.  After all, we are a nation of immigrants.  But immigrants needs to come here legally and be subject to the same laws and taxes (and, once legal, benefits) as everyone else, just like my grandmother, when she came here from Italy in 1947, as well as now.

A related topic is that of refugees.  The United States is a nation that accepts refugees, but it is also a nation that needs to be sure that we are not letting murderous Islamic extremists into our borders.  That's the age we live in today.  That's how our greatest enemy operates.  This is not a discriminatory statement, but a fact.  Folks on the left and right need to sit down with each other and have a sensible discussion about immigration reform and stop pointing accusatory fingers at each other.  We need to come up with some real solutions.  The walls we've built between ourselves need to come down.  After all, Conservatives don't like all walls.  It was the greatest President of my lifetime who famously told Mr. Gorbachev to "Tear down this wall!"  And paraphrasing thoughts from Darrell Hammond's autobiography, when Ronald Reagan spoke those words, he spoke them from his balls.