Build the wall

[bernie14]

“There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration. Not another foot,” President Joe Biden said back in August 2020.

US to fill border wall gaps at open area near Yuma, Arizona

July 28
PHOENIX (AP) — The Biden administration on Thursday authorized completion of the Trump-funded U.S.-Mexico border wall in an open area of southern Arizona near Yuma that has become one of the busiest corridors for illegal crossings.

 

[Senethro]

So is that good or bad in your opinion? Or is this one of those tribal things where it only matters who is doing a thing?

 

[bernie14]

It's the right thing


EDIT Biden's admission to tribalism

 

[Senethro]

I mean, if those particular gaps in the wall were near minefields, I could agree.

 

[Lexicus]

The Department of Homeland Security said Thursday the work to close four wide gaps in the wall near Yuma will better protect migrants who can slip down a slope or drown walking through a low section of the Colorado River.

 

[Remorseless1]

I'm guessing the latter. There have been physical barriers along the southern birders for years, along with patrols by the Border Patrol and an infrastructure system built to handle migrants and those seeking refugee status. What is going on is those resources strained by a record number of people coming to the border. Which has nothing to do with who is in the White House. Poverty, corruption and oppression are driving people from Central and South America as well as from Cuba and Haiti to flee to the US.

Finally, it is Congress, not the president, who is supposed to deal with the situation at the border. Typically, Congress keeps kicking this can down the road.

 

[El_Machinae]

This will be one of those "we trust our guy to do it if it's necessary" things, I think. I've spoken about it before. Like, obviously, some barriers will be necessary - if only as a safety feature. So, if it's 'our guy' who really doesn't want to build walls says 'we need some wall here', it might be less despised merely because of who proposed it.

It's like an AGW advocate needing to fly and being thought of as 'hypocritical' only by the people who are in favor of unregulated carbon pollution. If someone is very alert to the damages of carbon, then we trust their ability to spend some of it more than we trust the Exxon-Mobile execs in the private jets.

[as an aside, many border measures have been couched in terms of concern for the migrants, so YMMV if you actually care about this expressed concern]

 

[Kyriakos]

Biden the wall-builder.
He probably is unaware of what the wall is, tbf - barring some scattered lucid moments

 

[Lexicus]

[as an aside, many border measures have been couched in terms of concern for the migrants, so YMMV if you actually care about this expressed concern]

I do care about it, but also recognize it's often used in Orwellian fashion, the same way the police say they're just helping you out by arresting you.

 

[El_Machinae]

Yeah. Like obviously some border efforts are intended to protect people or at least limit the risks. We never discuss it here, but "human traffickers" is a very common term in all the border discussions.
As to whether they're telling the truth about this set of upgrade .... well, no idea. Either you're biased to 'trust' Biden or you're biased to trust that they'll lie about such things.
Honestly, 'Trump-funded' also leapt out as weird phrasing.

 

[Lexicus]

The whole framing of border security to combat human trafficking, like so much other US policy discourse around Latin American issues, is completely ass-backwards. The human trafficking (in the sense of 'voluntary' people-smuggling, not, like, kidnapping or duping people for de facto slavery) is caused by the militarized/sealed border, period. Just let people cross (both ways) and they won't need coyotes.

The modern "sealed" border is a relatively new thing, which most people don't realize. The border was porous for seasonal migrants for most of its history (including the period when it was moved some thousand miles westward by a criminal war of aggression). It was only in the 20th century that Americans became worried about racial eugenics and decided the border needed to be "secure."

Which is what has not only caused the demand for people-smuggling, but also led to many, many more one-way crossings than previously. It became too risky to cross over and over again; much easier to cross once and then try to make your way in the land of opportunity.

A border security regime focused on actually keeping people safe, rather than keeping racial contagion out of the land of the free and home of the whites, would look very different from what we have now.

 

[El_Machinae]

Heck, even a Foreign Policy platform that didn't actively try to create refugees would have made all the difference.
Honestly, it often feels like a too-late bandaid. People migrate because other places are nicer. But people also migrate because their place is worse.

 

[Joij21]

It was only in the 20th century that Americans became worried about racial eugenics and decided the border needed to be "secure."

No, it's because in the early 20th century the Mexican government was experiencing a civil war just before WW1. Warlords frequently raided towns on the American side, leading to a grave distrust of further crossings. This was further compounded when after the civil war, during WW1, Germany was so frustrated with the US shipping war material to Britain that they sent a telegram to the new Mexican government proclaiming they would assist them in invading and retaking possessions lost from the Mexican American War. The United States declared war on the central powers immediately to such a threat.

Under no circumstances will the U.S. allow a foreign peer power to gain favor with Mexico or nations within the Caribbean. If one gains a foothold on both Cuba and the Yucatan peninsula, one controls a strategic straight into the Gulf of Mexico whereby one is more sheltered from the U.S. Navy. Essentially this allows someone to more easily invade the gulf states through an amphibious D-Day style assault. With most of America's oil refineries as well as the entrance to the Mississippi located there, you can cripple energy capacity as well as continue a riverine assault to cut the nation in half and begin creating a supply line to invade the Midwest. The Midwest being the source of America's food supply. Capture that and you capture America.

Hence America quickly learned this vulnerability after WW1 and decided to find ways to keep Mexico and the Caribbean down, so as to never allow any future power to come in and have adequate infrastructure lying around in those nations to be used for such a hypothetical invasion.

 

[Ajidica]

It was only in the 20th century that Americans became worried about racial eugenics and decided the border needed to be "secure."

To be fair, it was only after WW1 that passports really became a Thing, which is when people really started caring about border controls. Given this was happening even on the border between, say, France and the UK, I'm not sure you can paint the entire idea of border controls as being due to racial eugenics.

 

[amadeus]

Prior to 1900 I don’t think it made a whole lot of difference for most people what side of the border you were on anyway. Not like farming corn was that glamorous a position when ox carts were the norm.

 

[Lexicus]

To be fair, it was only after WW1 that passports really became a Thing, which is when people really started caring about border controls. Given this was happening even on the border between, say, France and the UK, I'm not sure you can paint the entire idea of border controls as being due to racial eugenics.

I'm talking about the US southern border specifically, not all borders everywhere. But yeah, we can add nationalist paranoia to the list of reasons for the existence of border controls in general.

 

[Ajidica]

Wishing to enforce border controls is hardly nationalist paranoia, or is the EU concern over smuggling and lax customs enforcement through the Ireland-Northern Ireland border simply nationalist paranoia?

 

[Lexicus]

Wishing to enforce border controls is hardly nationalist paranoia, or is the EU concern over smuggling and lax customs enforcement through the Ireland-Northern Ireland border simply nationalist paranoia?

If I were to use your logic here I would say something like "oh so you're saying Brexit voters aren't racist?" But that would be silly so instead I'll just note that 1) historical context is a thing and 2) controls on the passage of goods are different from controls on the movement of persons. I have been talking about the latter here, though of course it is possible for controls on goods to be motivated by racism and paranoia as well.

 

[Zardnaar]

If they want to stop illegal immigration border wall won't do squat.

Punish the employers who employ illegals. Can't get a job illegally would choke off the pull effect of the USA.

 

[Senethro]

Srsly tho, is this thread actually for anything, or is it just thumbing your nose?

Is conservative ideology actually for anything for that matter or is it all just spite?