WALLED WORLD

PLACE OF BIRTH IS NOT A CHOICE

The world is witnessing a recent proliferation of border walls. There were fewer than five border walls globally at the end of World War II. Now, there are seventy-seven major border walls. These walls exist in Israel, Morocco, Iran, Turkey, India, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Poland, Latvia, and the U.S., amongst other places. Border walls are expensive. For example, the US-Mexico border wall costs between one million to tens of millions of dollars per mile, taking into account expropriation of private property and construction. In addition, maintenance is costly.

Trump has designated building the southern border of the U.S. a “National Emergency,” and has militarized the border against the “invasion” of undocumented immigrants. Although border walls are designed to prevent illegal immigration, terrorism, and drug traffic, they have not proven effective in these regards.

Early immigrants to the U.S. had stemmed mostly from Europe. Since 1965 tens of thousands of immigrants come from Mexico and Latin America, with smaller numbers from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Immigrants, once welcomed, and still highly beneficial, are “walled out” in a variety of ways. Executive orders denying visas and indiscriminate deportation policies have dropped the numbers of new immigrants to all-time lows.

Still, conditions driving immigration have not changed.