Charles Krauthammer Builds A Wall

In 1987 I visited the divided city of Berlin. I like countless other tourists took the opportunity of a day visa to visit communist East Berlin. I traveled through Checkpoint Charlie and across the border into bleak East Berlin. I realized to my surprise that the Berlin Wall was not one wall rather it was two walls with guard towers and assorted tools of oppression filling the space between the two.

One image from my day in East Berlin stays with me to this day. As my companions and I traveled through East Berlin on foot, we came upon some surface rail tracks on a dilapidated side street. Those tracks were interrupted by a wall, the Berlin Wall, that cut through the middle of that street. The next day, back in West Berlin I decided to try and locate the other end of those tracks. Sure enough, on a quiet West Berlin street, the remains of old rail tracks emerged from the west side of the Berlin Wall. So, I did, what every idealistic college student in my position would have done, I proceeded to relieve myself on the Wall.

Fast forward nineteen years and we find that the architectural wonder that was the Berlin Wall still inspires armchair wall builders amongst us. Charles Krauthammer again uses the pages of the Washington Post to exercise his ample but confused mind. Krauthammer believes that a wall on the Mexican border is just what we need to keep those pesky Mexicans out and law-abiding citizens in:

Forget employer sanctions. Build a barrier. It is simply ridiculous to say it cannot be done. If one fence won’t do it, then build a second 100 yards behind it. And then build a road for patrols in between. Put in cameras. Put in sensors. Put out lots of patrols.

Can’t be done? Israel’s border fence has been extraordinarily successful in keeping out potential infiltrators who are far more determined than mere immigrants. Nor have very many North Koreans crossed into South Korea in the past 50 years.

The first thing that came to my mind was that Krauthammer must really have done some study of the Berlin Wall and must have learned those lessons well. But then he warned us with incredible mind reading capability not to make that very obvious comparison:

And don’t tell me that this is our Berlin Wall. When you build a wall to keep people in, that’s a prison. When you build a wall to keep people out, that’s an expression of sovereignty. The fence around your house is a perfectly legitimate expression of your desire to control who comes into your house to eat, sleep and use the facilities. It imprisons no one.

I’m sorry Charles but I guess I don’t see this as very neighborly. The two examples you cite, of Israel and North Korea, refer to states or entities in a state of war with their neighbors. Last time I checked, we were not at war with Mexico. Perhaps you believe we should be at war, but that really is another topic of discussion.

Mr. Krauthammer then generously offers to grant amnesty to the undocumented aliens already here. But not just yet. He wants to build the wall first, see how things go for say about two years, and then grant these unfortunate souls amnesty. Gee thanks Charles:

To achieve national consensus on legalization, we will need a short lag time between the two provisions, perhaps a year or two, to demonstrate to the skeptics that the current wave of illegals is indeed the last.

His proposal, though he may think it clever, is moronic at so many levels that my mind may explode to try to write down all of them. To save myself an aneurysm, I will only mention the most obvious one.

I wonder if Krauthammer realizes that the Berlin Wall attempted to divide a city, not to build a wall between two countries with a vast shared land border. Perhaps math is not his forte, but I should point out that he should get his calculator out, hire some land surveyors, and a good therapist, and figure out the logistics involved and the costs involved in building his wall. While he is at it, he might want to consider how to guard against invasion by sea from poor Mexicans. Perhaps a giant wall in the sea? I wonder if he remembers the Mariel Boat Lift from 1980 when Cubans came by sea by the thousands.

I suggest to Mr. Krauthammer and anyone else interested in genuine border control that perhaps they should ask two very simple questions.

• Why are people from Mexico coming to the United States?
• Will undocumented immigrants from Mexico wait in line to be guest workers instead of coming across the border illegally?

I think the answers are simple. People come across the border because there is work here that pays significantly better than the Third World wages they get in Mexico. There is also no reason to suspect that an expanded legal immigration path will stem the flow of undocumented immigrants coming from Mexico. I can’t see any reason when someone in Mexico is desperate for work, they would not do everything possible to make it to the United States regardless of whether it was legal or not.

Anyone serious about border control, and not just looking for cheap labor, clearly has to address the economic conditions in Mexico. As long as there is such a great disparity in economic conditions between these two neighbors, you can reasonably expect that Mexicans looking for work will find a way to get here to earn a living they otherwise cannot do in Mexico.

So, Mr. Krauthammer and the rest of you, put down your brick and trowel and use your ample but misguided minds to come up with an economic development plan for Mexico that will in the end benefit the United States greatly.

Once you have done that, you can then start thinking about smart border control using advanced technology and the considerable human intelligence skills of our Border Control personnel. You can also then with confidence legalize the millions of undocumented immigrants already here.