Thursday, May 25, 2006

Build the Wall!

In Russia they used to say: The government pretends to pay us and we pretend to work. Well, in the U.S. we could say that our politicians pretend to stop illegal immigration and Big Business pretends they don't hire them.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not so sure that it is fair for one rich country to lock out the poor around them, just like the rich man builds walls around the castle he built with ill-gotten gains. The earth is here for all of us.

I should know--I am an immigrant who came here legally. I voted with my feet twenty years ago and it wasn't easy to get into the U.S. Some said it was impossible, unless you already had family here. But we made it. And even though I think this is a great country, and I was willing to fight my way through the worst bureaucracy on earth--U.S Immigration--I do think there are a few things that can be improved.

Like the Wall to stop Mexicans from entering this country.

Look at this picture from the New York Times/Reuters. Is this the best we can do to stop illegal immigration from Mexico? A flimsy, corrugated, tin foil?

I mean, if we really want to stop people, the technology exists.

This is what Israel is building:


















And this is what Russia built in Berlin to stop people from jumping out from behind the iron curtain:
So the technology is there, yet we don't build that wall.

Instead President Bush sends 6,000 National guardsmen to "protect" our border. Ha.

The Mexican-American border is 1952 miles long. That's three additional soldiers per mile. They won't even see each other. Assuming they are properly spaced and not holed up in some border patrol office.

The Iron Curtain was 4000 miles long, twice as long as our border with Mexico. And it was built a lot sturdier than our flimsy pieces of "wall."

So what's the matter? Why can't we keep people out when Russia was so good at keeping people in? And why is it so hard for people from Western Europe, who don't have half their family in the U.S., to immigrate legally to the U.S. and so easy for Mexicans to run across the border?

Simple. Because Big Business really wants cheap labor, not well-educated Europeans.

So Bush and the other politicians do their bidding. They pretend to want to stop illegal immigration, while they do everything to keep the status quo.

Big Business doesn't want a wall. They want illegal immigration. They don't want a regulated border, with regulated minimum wages and all that other stuff. They want scared Mexicans that can be deported at any time working for less than minimum wage. Disposable people building disposable products. So that's what Big Business gets from our politicians.

Make no mistake about what's going on here. The people on Capitol Hill still believe in the concept of "Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free." They want the oppressed people to continue to come to us and they want to continue to oppress them. That's the real reason we have no real wall.

So I say: Build the Wall, a real wall and maybe we'll see real wages for our poorest immigrants. Maybe we'll see a functioning immigration program, with well educated people from around the world coming to us, and maybe Big Business will have to learn to do business in a lawful society, paying lawful wages.

Build the Wall. Bring it on!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Why not dig a canal on the border, use the excavated soil to build dikes in New Orleans and fill the canal with all those extra alligators in Florida?