Some walls are beautiful, like the soft gold walls of the ancient Anasazi cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde. And the adobe walls of Tucson or Mexico City draped in purple bougainvillea. Or the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, representing 2,000 years of Jewish history, hopes and prayers.
Throughout human history, walls have been used to keep others out – or in. Colorado’s Supermax prison entombs our nation’s most dangerous felons behind rows of razor wire and concrete. Gated communities are designed to protect their inhabitants from the rest of the world, keeping people both out and in. Walled compounds are a staple of Muslim societies, enclosing the family inside to keep them separate from the world outside.
Medieval towns used walls to protect themselves from invaders. The Chinese built the nearly 4,000-mile long Great Wall of China to fend off Mongol hordes. The walls of homes are designed to keep out bad weather and dangerous people while defining a family’s space. The Berlin Wall forced weary Germans to remain in a stark, gray, dismal Communist society.
But these walls may delude us. Gated communities cannot keep out a burglar disguised as a delivery truck driver. Medieval cities across Europe collapsed as attacking armies breached their walls. Prisoners have tunneled out of prisons. Even China’s enormous Great Wall did not stop barbarian invaders. And I have a chunk of the Berlin Wall, bought for $5 from an enterprising Turkish immigrant in Germany, proof that this symbol of the Iron Curtain could not fulfill its purpose, either.
The proposed wall dividing Mexico from the United States will work no better to keep illegal workers from crossing the border to find jobs.
Determined people have always found ways around, under, over or through walls. They have beaten them down with cannons, hurled over balls of flames to destroy the cities behind, bombed them from airplanes above, tunneled beneath them, and driven through them. So, it’s puzzling that Congress thinks spending millions of dollars on a wall to ward off illegal immigrants will work any better than all the other walls in modern or historic times.
Both the U.S. House and Senate have included border walls in their immigration reform bills. This may reduce the flow of illegal immigrants across the desert. But, like a balloon, if you squeeze one place, it pops out another. Driven people will find a way to fly over the wall, just like illegal drugs are flown into America. Or a way around the wall by sea, like Cubans and Haitians and Chinese laborers. Smuggling people pays well. Getting into the United States is the prize to be won. A wall is just another obstacle.
It would make more sense to spend that money on what really matters for our security, such as deploying enough guards to thoroughly patrol our borders rather than asking the National Guard to shoulder yet another task that takes them away from their responsibility to protect Americans in times of war or catastrophe. Far better to have trained border guards than the vigilante Minutemen priding themselves on slap-dash border protection. Next, invest in more high tech surveillance equipment to monitor movements across the border.
Put that money into replacing the billions of dollars of National Guard equipment – trucks, backhoes, weapons, medical supplies – that have been left behind in Iraq. Roughly half of the National Guard’s equipment, meant for emergencies at home, is in Iraq. So much for the ability of the National Guard to protect people facing another Katrina or mob violence or epidemics or tornadoes.
Invest in the vaccines and readiness training that will save millions of Americans in case of another global flu pandemic.
National security is not only about borders. It is about preparedness for all threats to our society. Instead of pandering to voters in this election year with a border panacea that has never in history worked, Congress should invest in the people and technology that really make a difference for our national security – both along the border and elsewhere.
Gail Schoettler (gailschoettler@email.msn.com) is a former U.S. ambassador, Colorado lieutenant governor and treasurer, Democratic nominee for governor and Douglas County school board member.
