Those entrusted with arguing for particular contentious public policy options have an obligation to do so competently and honestly. Few things in the public arena are more infuriating tha watching the wise and responsible point of view go spinning down in flames because its advocates are inarticulate, confused, repulsive (thus letting the Cognitive Dissonance scale take over), illogical, addicted to rationalizations,or stupid.
Unfortunately, most of our public policy controversies fall into this category. There might have been an intelligent social policy debate to be had over whether marriage should be extended to same-sex couples, but one the opponents resorted to religious dogma or straight-up bigotry, the argument was lost. Affirmative action is on the way to extinction in part due to blatantly hypocritical, pretzel-like arguments from its advocates: in a holiday discussion, an Asian-American woman told me that she did not support the lawsuit against Harvard for res ipsa loquitur discrimination against Asian students because the suit was being pushed by racists.
Oh.
Bye!
The debate over tightening security at our boarders is literally a no-brainer—of course the U.S. should take necessary measures to prevent illegal immigration—that is increasingly brainless. Give President Trump the prize for starting it down this route. Either intentionally or because the man simply cannot express himself with precision, he initially framed the need to enforce our immigration laws with the confounding statement, “They (that is, Mexico) aren’t sending us their best people.” Well, yes, I guess it would be nice if a better class of illegal immigrants breaking our laws and defying our procedures was getting into the country to steal as many benefits of U.S residence that they can, but in truth it doesn’t matter whether illegal immigrants are the best people or the worst people. I don’t care if every one of them is a candidate for sainthood; it’s not up to foreign citizens to unilaterally decide who lives in the United States, and they have no right to defy our sovereignty. That’s it. That’s enough. It would be nice if no terrorists could gain access to their hunting ground through the porous enforcement Democrats and cheap labor-loving business interests have inflicted on us, but it would be no less imperative to enforce out borders if there were no terrorists. There is no valid, sensible, logical or honest argument from any perspective that we should allow people who come here a) to do so and b) to avoid enforcement of the laws they broke as long as they don’t break other laws.
Thanks to President Trump’s habitually simplistic speech and meat-axe reasoning, however, immediately joined by the open-borders advocates’ eagerness to avoid the real issue, we are still conducting this debate on the “good illegal/bad illegal/ ‘Think of the children!’/ ‘Be afraid!’ ” basis. Pundits and journalists have been happy to follow suit, especially since Trump’s focus feeds into the false narrative that wanting to enforce our laws, borders and sovereignty is a desire motivated by racism. Undoubtedly Trump’s opponents would be doing this anyway: playing the race card as an automatic response to anyone not towing the Left’s line became the knee-jerk, automatic during the Obama administration. However, constantly emphasizing the violent and criminal illegals as if they are the only reason we don’t welcome Southern Border-jumpers into the U.S. with open arms makes the racist slur easy.
Thus we get, on MSNBC, Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal claiming that President Trump’s real agenda is to make “America pure” by banning “folks of color” and shutting down all legal immigration. She’s a disgrace—the MSNBC host Chris Hayes too, since he didn’t challenge her, but then, its MSNBC—but Trump’s obsession with the murderers, drug dealers rapists and terrorists play into her unscrupulous hands. Historian Jon Meacham, who wrote the terrific biography of Andrew Jackson, “American Lion,” has apparently become Trump Deranged, and this week compared the President’s demand for a wall to the Ku Klux Klan. Nice. In the New York Times, an op-ed blames Hollywood’s recent obsession with cartels as the popular villains for supporting public fear of “a supposedly real menace in the here and now. In late December, President Trump shut down parts of the government over the border wall he wants to build to keep out immigrants he says are drug-dealing criminals. He’s never stopped making up false and distorted statements about the dangers posed by Latino immigrants. All the while, Hollywood has been inventing screen stories that sell the image of lawbreaking Latinos as a threat to American peace and security.”
The President has never said a single word in denigration of legal Latino immigrants, but his exclusive emphasis on the worst of the illegal variety allows dishonest advocacy like the op-ed to thrive. Unenforced borders are a “real menace” even if it is just Care Bears and Smurfs who are breaking our immigration laws.
There’s only one undeniable reason to enforce these laws, and that is that they are laws, and a society of laws that ignores its laws cannot survive. That’s all. Stop debating how bad, or good, the lawbreakers are. It doesn’t matter regarding the need to enforce U.S sovereignty; it partially determines how bad the damage will be if we don’t, but not whether there will be serious damage. President Trump’s deplorable communications skills, we are told, are effective in persuading people who share his problems with linear thought, critical thinking, carefully constructed arguments and articulate speech. For good policy to prevail, somewhat smarter people have to sign on too, and warping the issue makes it harder than it should be.
Ethics Alarms 
It would be great if we all responded positively to the argument that we are a nation of laws and not men but such arguments fall on deaf ears.
I am sorry but I cannot blame Trump for speaking bluntly. If he used the argument that it does not matter if these are good people or bad people breaking our laws such argument would be met with the same BS that he is creating a crisis. Giving people stats on criminal activity, costs associated with illegal crossings, or gang activities is what educates people. That is what Trump is giving along with past and present CBP leadership. The opposition quotes anonymous “experts”, pushes focus group tested platitudes such as ” manufactured crisis”, “medieval ineffective wall”, as well as outright lies such as claiming the wall will span 2500 miles of border.
This issue has been kicked down the road for decades and now it’s Trump’s fault for addressing this head on. Trump could have the oratory skills of Winston Churchill and the resistance would still be trying to facilitate a coup de tat.
My concern is that after today’s hypersalacious headline in the Times that the FBI started a criminal investigation of Trump as a Russian agent after the Comey firing we are closer than ever to a hot civil war that will be directly attributed to Nadler, Comey, Clinton, Swalwell, Schiff. This story has been plastered all over CNN and MSNBC despite the fact that story finally states no evidence exists. Even that statement was distorted by claiming no evidence was publically available so as to suggest the FBI has other evidence. These linguistic gymnastics are exactly what silver tongue devils use to manipulate people.
I get it that Trump is not the smooth operator that Obama was but I feel more violated by Obama’s divisive rhetoric than any of the hyperbole uttered by Trump. Trump may have the oration skills of a high school student but I will take a leader with backbone over a bullshitter everyday.
If a simple explanation using clear logic was the answer there would be no drug addicts. People need stories and examples to understand reality, and if the story makes sense to them emotionally and spiritually they believe it to be true, no matter how delusional it appears to the unbeliever. President Trump is telling a story, that he hopes will get the right thing accomplished. It’s a delusional story to those that don’t believe it, and powerful truth to those that do believe.
Very interesting take. And, probably correct.
Rwe
B schools promote the use of story telling as a means to influence customers. Every commercial is a story designed to create a positive emotional bond. Reagan and Obama used stories highly effectively.
You said ” President Trump is telling a story, that he hopes will get the right thing accomplished. It’s a delusional story to those that don’t believe it, and powerful truth to those that do believe.”
The question boils down to is it a delusional story for those that don’t believe it, or is their desire not to want to believe it delusional thinking.
The entire border wall issue is an economic one. Does the cost of not ensuring our entry laws are obeyed as well as the cost to care for or deal with the undocumented who violate those entry laws exceed the cost of the wall? The answer is yes unless you allow emotional arguments into the equation.
Correction: I needed to add that the human maintenance costs avoided because of the wall or barrier exceed the cost of constructing and maintaining the barrier.
The basic dishonesty of the anti border security crowd can be seen in their nigh-universal habit of “forgetting” to use the word illegal in either their own claims or when citing the supposed positions of their opponents.
Part of Trump’s problem is that he is from New York. “Illegal alien’ and ‘legal immigrant’ have been lumped together by Democrats into the label ‘immigrants’. One of the reasons for immigration policies is to limit the number people coming in to a reasonable number. The argument over this ‘reasonable’ number is a dead end if you have to debate it in the press. The second reason is that you want to screen the people coming in. With unregulated immigration, you know you are going to be getting a lot of the worst people. How do we know that? Because that is what has always happened. Look, if the American Indian tribes had vigorously enforced immigration policies, they wouldn’t be in this predicament. Did Europe send its ‘best and brightest’? No, Europe sent the vicious, the ruthless, and the criminal elements from society to get rid of them. This was a penal colony. When the United States broke away, England went out looking for another place to transport the criminal element from their society. The Australians, lacking a wall or vigorously enforced immigration regulations, were the next victims.
Trump’s bad argument is still a valid argument (just incomplete). It is a lot better aregument than the “we need to let all 6 billion people in the world come here to live off our welfare because…feelings!”
“…Europe sent the vicious, the ruthless, and the criminal elements from society to get rid of them.”
Can you cite that? I was not aware of Europe dumping anyone other than the occasional indentured servant deplorable. I really would like to learn about an aspect of my history I have never heard.
My understanding: many (if not most) of the groups who came did so at their own behest, to escape European oppression or for economic opportunity. As such, they WERE the ‘best and brightest’ as they 1) recognised the need to leave, and 2) had the gumption to get here and successfully set up a society. I once read an essay that called this a ‘brain drain’ on Europe, as the self motivated, the skilled, and the intelligent vacated the Continent.
Jack wrote, “The debate over tightening security at our boarders is literally a no-brainer—of course the U.S. should take necessary measures to prevent illegal immigration—that is increasingly brainless. Give President Trump the prize for starting it down this route. Either intentionally or because the man simply cannot express himself with precision, he initially framed the need to enforce our immigration laws with the confounding statement, “They (that is, Mexico) aren’t sending us their best people.”
If I read the above statement correctly Jack is stating that President Trump gets the prize for starting the increasingly brainless debate on border security.
I will stipulate that Trump’s precision in language could be substantially improved but what statement is factually true:
“We need to develop a pathway to citizenship”, or his
“They are not sending us their best people”
I would lay odds that Trump’s statement is more true. Why? Because a pathway to citizenship does exist. The statement above technically means that our current pathway to citizenship is one the undocumented are unwilling to undertake or cannot, because of their violation of our immigration law, meet the lawful requirements for citizenship.
Now, of the many that cross over the border illegally, how many would be eligible for H1b visas because they possess a technical skill in need. I doubt if there are any.
One of the arguments against the wall being touted on talk shows is that we are experiencing a negative net migration to Mexico. So what, most of the migration is coming not from Mexico but Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Even if we had negative net migration that presumes that it is more of the criminal element is returning to their home country then are “good people” entering. If it were the reverse that would undermine their premise that migration flows are not an issue.
Trump did not coin the term “Dreamers” which again is factually untrue. These children came to the US as a result of their parent’s choice. These kids held no American Dream upon arrival it was foisted upon them. What special benefits are we to bestow on children of those US citizens whose lives were upended due to parental choices; drug addiction, incarceration, or even an unwillingness to advance themselves so that they can provide a better life for their offspring. When American parents get a new job overseas or in another state what do the children do? Do these American children get to argue that they want to stay in the community where they have developed friendships or are the required to stay with their parents and move with them? Should dreamers be treated differently?
How exactly does one argue against something termed a “Humanitarian Crisis”. You cannot effectively argue when emotionalism is employed. I submit that many “humanitarian crisis” would evaporate if they had to rely on Gofundme pages. Instead of governments shelling out billions in humanitarian aid why not use a more democratic method using the United Way model. We list some “crisis’s” and then let people donate the amount they want to their favored crisis or they can just let the government spread the donation around. We could do the same for foreign aid; pick a country to adopt and let the government send your dollars there. Funny thing happens when you ask people to step up to the plate and contribute, their idealism fades. It is much easier to be an idealist with other people’s money.
Since we are talking about language precision someone should define the following so that we understand what is being debated:
“Paying one’s fair share” What determines fairness? Who decides what is fair? Conversely, if I pay my fair share how do I get my fair share?
What is meant by ” Hard Working Folks” Does this include the doctor that spent 15 minutes asking me question and then charging me 250 dollars for his hard spent time. What about the receptionist that smiles and says hello to people as they enter. Or, are we talking about coal miners? Not everyone works hard so when we talk about a benefit for “hard working Americans” who exactly are we talking about.
Trump’s linguistic skills are no less precise than the ones that argue against him.
You quite correctly point out the imprecision of others. Fairness is purely subjective bullshit.
The simplest and most influential story to tell anyone on either side of the debate is the your own home analogy, boiling down to this: “Why do you have a door and a lock on your where you live?”
The answer will inevitably be the same reason countries need to have as close to full control of their borders as possible.
If an open borders advocate refuses to acknowledge the truthfulness of this analogy, invite them to remove the lock and leave the door open to their place of residence. If they refuse, call them a hypocrite to their face, because they are.
your door…jeez
adimagejim,
This is right inline with a column I submitted back on the 7th for a publication that won’t be put to print until March. Here’s a little taste…
It’s becoming quite clear to me that the extreme deeping division in our national politics and society as a whole can only be solved one way and it’s not going to be pretty.
I proposed Rock-Paper-Scissors, but progressives decline to play where they might lose.
Instead, they want a hot shooting war they are destined to lose.
Trump’s wall will literally have no effect on the issue under discussion. It can’t.
To see why – https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-wall-wont-work.
It is purely symbolic. Political theatre.
It may have other political purposes too, but I’d rather just stick with provable, objective physical and legal facts which should avoid partisan controversy.
Purely symbolic and political theater are not synonymous.
True. This is both.
Yes BUT. Symbolism often has tangible beneficial effects. For example, Obama killed (for a while) .a major pipeline project to demonstrate US support for anti-oil policies related to global warming. He admitted that in truth, doing so would have no practical effect on climate change. Political theater does not have any positive effects, except as a tactic in political warfare.
Amazing how the sections of wall we already have seem to work so well in those local areas.
From a friend of mine, until recently a sergeant of combat engineers in the US Army;
In answer to the statement that while the wall is flawed, this person hasn’t heard any better ideas:
It’s really hard to discuss costs and benefits without at least a starting point, and most of the numbers seem to be picked out of the air by one side or another. But even the design stage is going to cost a small fortune (by real world standards, a trivial sum by government standards) and I’d like to see at least a general idea of what we want this wall to do and be. If it is being presented as a wall and nothing but a wall, I don’t need to spend billions on a detailed design stage to know it won’t work. Details of the drainage or what type of steel we use for the slats are not going to change that reality.
I have said it a hundred times. Immigration is a complex topic. No single solution is going to make a meaningful long-term impact. Immigration reform that cleans up the system has to be included. The current immigration system is so broken that native-speakers of English from a friendly country with an engineering degree can spend tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers and STILL can’t get straight answers. The countries these people are leaving are such cesspools that even crossing minefields would be better than staying – and we helped make them that way.
The whole situation needs to be addressed, and building a wall is a feel-good solution that is being pushed more because it pisses off Democrats than because it is a practical solution. The money the Administration is talking about would be better spent expanding the judicial system so that we can get people their hearings and decide whether to admit or deport them in less time, because just reducing the time we keep detainees in holding facilities would save huge amounts of money. Expanding the number of agents on the Border and providing them better ISR assets. Put some teeth into eVerify – and start sending the people who OWN the companies to actual prison for hiring illegals, not just slapping on some trivial fine for the corporation. Hell, I’m down with charging coyotes with Murder One if we can show anyone died on the trip, and human trafficking regardless of whether they did or not. Treat anyone carrying a firearm across the border as an illegal combatant taken under arms, and shoot them. Expand penalties for drug smuggling and at the same time decriminalize marijuana at the Federal level to take a massive bite out of their revenue stream.
At the same time, set up a program to accept people as economic refugees under temporary visas contingent on locating a job and keeping out of trouble. Spend some time on outreach in Central and South America to counteract rumors and misinformation about immigration to the United States. This comes back to the point about simplifying the immigration system. If you can’t explain it to a Guatemalan peasant, then saying “obey the law” is meaningless because he cannot understand the law. For that matter, you can’t understand immigration law. Immigration lawyers don’t understand immigration law. The f*cking INS doesn’t understand immigration law – ask any immigrant.
I’m sorry I can’t fit this all into a tweet, and thus it will never gain any momentum, but complex sociocultural phenomena are not amenable to simple solutions unless they are nuclear-bomb level of drastic
From the same guy, quoting Amy Patrick, a professional engineer.
Walls… Walls alone mean nothing. I am Not That Kind Of Engineer.
I’m the kind of engineer that did mobility and counter-mobility for 20 years, and I could get through or over an unmanned wall with a minimal investment in equipment. Manning the mile castles is necessary to ensure that someone like me with more desperation or fewer ethical constraints doesn’t punch holes in it – and none of the proposals floated make provision for mile castles and expansion of manning to defend it.
The comparison to the Hungarian border wall is incomplete because we are talking less than 300 miles of border, manned by the majority of the Hungarian Army at the height of their crisis. Also funded by 4 countries. We don’t really have the infrastructure to support hundreds of thousands of people deployed along the border. Do the math on manning requirements. Please.
However, for the wall qua the wall, see below discussion and if you have valid rebuttals, please post. I am not qualified to really analyze a lot of what she says.
Amy Patrick
Howdy.
To recap: I’m a licensed structural and civil engineer with a MS in structural engineering from the top program in the nation and over a decade of experience on high-performance projects, and particularly of cleaning up design disasters where the factors weren’t properly accounted for, and I’m an adjunct professor of structural analysis and design at UH-Downtown. I have previously been deposed as an expert witness in matters regarding proper construction of walls and the various factors associated therein, and my testimony has passed Daubert.
Am I a wall expert? I am. I am literally a court-accepted expert on walls.
Structurally and civil engineering-wise, the border wall is not a feasible project. Trump did not hire engineers to design the thing. He solicited bids from contractors, not engineers. This means it’s not been designed by professionals. It’s a disaster of numerous types waiting to happen.
What disasters?
Off the top of my head…
1) It will mess with our ability to drain land in flash flooding. Anything impeding the ability of water to get where it needs to go (doesn’t matter if there are holes in the wall or whatever) is going to dramatically increase the risk of flooding.
2) Messes with all kind of stuff ecologically. For all other projects, we have to do an Environmental Site Assessment, which is arduous. They’re either planning to circumvent all this, or they haven’t accounted for it yet, because that’s part of the design process, and this thing hasn’t been designed.
3) The prototypes they came up with are nearly impossible to build or don’t actually do the job. This article explains more:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.engineering.com/amp/17599.html
And so on.
The estimates provided for the cost are arrived at unreasonably. You can look for yourself at the two-year-old estimate that you see everyone citing.
(See next comment for pdf)
It does not account for rework, complexities beyond the prototype design, factors to prevent flood and environmental hazard creation, engineering redesign… It’s going to be higher than $50bn. The contractors will hit the government with near CONSTANT change orders. “Cost overrun” will be the name of the game. It will not be completed in Trump’s lifetime.
I’m a structural forensicist, which means I’m called in when things go wrong. This is a project that WILL go wrong. When projects go wrong, the original estimates are just *obliterated*. And when that happens, good luck getting it fixed, because there aren’t that many forensicists out there to right the ship, particularly not that are willing to work on a border wall project— a large quotient of us are immigrants, and besides, we can’t afford to bid on jobs that are this political. We’re small firms, and we’re already busy, and we don’t gamble our reputations on political footballs. So you’d end up with a revolving door of contractors making a giant, uncoordinated muddle of things, and it’d generally be a mess. Good money after bad. The GAO agrees with me.
And it won’t be effective. I could, right now, purchase a 32 foot extension ladder and weld a cheap custom saddle for the top of the proposed wall so that I can get over it. I don’t know who they talked to about the wall design and its efficacy, but it sure as heck wasn’t anybody with any engineering imagination.
Another thing: we are not far from the day where inexpensive drones will be able to pick up and carry someone. This will happen in the next ten years, and it’s folly to think that the coyotes who ferry people over the border won’t purchase or create them. They’re low enough, quiet enough, and small enough to quickly zip people over any wall we could build undetected with our current monitoring setup.
Let’s have border security, by all means, but let’s be smart about it. This is not smart. It’s not effective. It’s NOT cheap. The returns will be diminishing as technology advances, too. This is a ridiculous idea that will never be successfully executed and, as such, would be a monumental waste of money.
Click to access Bernstein-%20The%20Trump%20Wall.pdf
Re: the reference to ‘mile castles’ – the author is a military historian, as well as recently retired professional soldier. This refers to the outposts spaced about 1000 double paces apart that made the various historical walls effective. Also the bunkers etc providing covering fire for antintank ditches, minefields, and other tactical obstacles the author is expert in, both in construction and breaching.
Modern technology can replace having a platoon in a bunker every mile with having a mix of drone-mounted and other sensors, and high mobility teams of company size every 10 miles, saving about 2/3 of the required manpower. We’re then looking at 100 people per 10 miles, 300 with logistics and 24/7 coverage. Call it half a million trained migration border guards.
You can do it for less – only the easiest to get at borders, near population centres, and a mix of bollards, fence and walls from existing scrap materials, pierced steel planking from the Vietnam war etc, with far fewer guards. 70% of the value for 0.01% of the price, less than 0.1 trillion over 10 years. But that was done a decade ago. Those existing 700 miles would have to be upgraded to the new standard too.
1) I wonder if the wall expert knew that Border Patrol and INS weren’t being replaced by the wall with the hyperbolic reference to “mile castles”?
2) I wonder if the wall expert really expected us to think contractors and engineers are mutually exclusive professions?
3) Cost overrun is the name of the game in Federal spending which is why big government is grossly inefficient. Yet, if the object of spending protects an agreed upon value set, then the cost in theory becomes worth it, while making us ask ourselves if we have our value-set balanced appropriately.
It’s always hard to take experts seriously as experts when their assessments are so clearly clouded by partisanship and a preset conclusion.
The wall-expert literally reads like a so-called climate ‘scientist’ in their ‘expert opinion’.
So find anyone with any technical expertise in the subject who disagrees.
Anyone.
There’s bound to be someone.
Examine what evidence they adduce.
You are correct though, she does sound like a climate scientist. Like virtually all those familiar with climate science in fact.
For my sins, I was involved in a scientific research satellite – FedSat – in the early 2000s. One of the many experimental payloads was a Ka band message store and retrieval system, gathering uplinked data from ARGO buoys in the oceans around the world, then telemetering it down to the ground station when it was over that. Shaking any bugs out of the system.
Before then, we relied on bathymetric data gathered by ships and submarines (water temperature variation is crucial in sub ops as it affects sonar conditions), data that was spotty with large gaps in coverage. Conservative ‘let’s not panic just yet’ guestimates were made about ocean warming as the result, guestimates that didn’t match the models. Models that predicted far greater rates of heat absorption than our guestimates. I rather pinned my hopes on that.
Now we have good data instead. No great gaps of coverage, no guesswork.
The new data matches the models.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/01/11/oceans-are-warming-faster-than-we-thought-scientists-suggest-we-brace-impact/?utm_term=.32e5d60405da
It will take awhile, and while we can’t make things better, we can maybe prevent things from getting a whole heap worse in a century.
I think at current rates, the storms, wildfires, plankton and fish die offs etc won’t be able this be ignored in 5 years. Not by most people.
My son is 17. By the time he’s 60, we can’t prevent the world from being unrecognisable. We can maybe prevent the extinction of most salt water fish though, sharks are hardy beasts and flexible in diet. Keep sea level rise from hereon to less than 1cm per year. I think coral reefs will be all gone, a great pity. Hope you like eating jellyfish (as I do), they should thrive..
For the sake of clarity, do you favor border/immigration control, just not a wall? Do you favor climate change mitigation, just not an economic system upheaval to get it with uncertain results?
Also, do you agree climate science has become a forum for alarmists seeking power and many models which have been proven significantly inaccurate? In 2011 there was a telemetric data based study indicating ocean absorption of heat was much less than models predicted. Or did the scientists have to move on from those models?
So in other words, ignore the legitimate concerns with the analysis and pretend like I made an opening into a climate discussion.
I hear a lot of pseudo-scientific blather, to cover up the bullshit being espoused. I AM an engineer. The ‘wall expert’ is full of shit, six ways from Sunday. I don’t care if she is a ‘court accepted wall expert’ or not: I suspect not given her lack of scientific understanding and how she shades her arguments. My partisan hack detector was pegged.
(The Climate Change fear mongering is more bullshit, but I have dealt with the fake ‘evidence’ before and will ignore it here)
It boils down to a fact Democrats are well aware of: walls work. Walls will limit the number of second class citizens Democrats can use to inflate their votes. This makes them ‘immoral.’ Funny how Democrats all lock their doors and put up walls for themselves.
A wall cannot be turned off. All of the extra courts, border security, virtual this-or-that can be simply turned off, the first time a Democrat is in power. This is why Democrats are willing to fund anything but a wall.
While a wall alone is not the only answer, the Democrats know that opening a hole in an already existing wall will not play well with voters, who want border security, on the whole. Everything else is window dressing, excuses to not act.
We on the law and order side of immigration policy have been lied to by Democrats (and the Elites) about border security for decades now. Excuse us if we don’t believe more lies coming from the same crowd who lied to Reagan, to Bush, and to Trump. Build the damn wall.
I DID like the truth about enforcing existing laws (and making them stronger) on American citizens who hire illegals. That alone would make a wall irrelevant.
The Elite Establishment (both sides of the aisle) fear that solution most of all. The Swamp makes a LOT of money on illegals. Dry up the reason illegals come here and the revenue source goes away.