Why Walls Are Stupid

I’m tired of hearing the talking point, “Build the wall!” Even more ridiculous was the promise that Mexico was going to pay for it. First, Trump said Mexico was going to gladly write a check and now he claims they’ll pay for it indirectly with a promised new trade deal. Until then, the president is demanding that Congress allocate American tax dollars to pay for it. My response is, “Oh hell no!” Walls don’t work. Desperate people will use a ladder to climb over it, dig a tunnel to go under it, or drill right through it. At the heart of the issue is why people are coming and perhaps our tax dollars can be used to get to the root of the problem.

Human migration is as old as humanity itself. Intelligent and able-bodied people will flee less than ideal circumstances in one location to a location that offers a better opportunity for economic survival and/or safety. And who can blame migrants for fleeing war or violence or persecution or oppression or starvation? Proverbs 27:12 says, “A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge; but the simple pass on, and suffer for it.”

The Evangelicals supporting this president and his call for the wall should know better than anyone that migration is a strategy that is repeated throughout the Bible with the righteous fleeing oppression, starvation, and persecution. They should recall their Sunday School lesson about the walls of Jericho that came tumbling down found in Joshua 6: 1-27. The fearmongering strategy put forth by this Administration is nothing but a proposed waste of tax payer dollars and a valed nod to racism against brown people.

I’m glad that some media outlets are countering the misrepresentation of statistics, gross exaggerations, and outright lies about the people seeking refuge and the danger we are in because we do not have a wall. The fact is that we are not being overrun by murderers, rapists and human traffickers. Drugs are coming in through legal ports of entry and through the mail to meet the demand of Americans for those drugs. The statistics show that fewer immigrants commit murder and rape than Americans. The few human traffickers won’t be deterred by a wall.

Here’s my point. If my family was facing the kinds of challenges these Central Americans are facing in their home countries, I would flee as well. I would hope that the 5.7 billion dollars we want to spend on a stupid wall would instead go towards helping to shore up the countries affected by our demand for drugs and finding ways to end the insatiable demand for drugs by Americans. People don’t migrate unless they are desperate. And a wall will never stop a desperate person who is fleeing for her life and for the lives of her precious children.