Will a Border Wall Break our Ties with Mexico?
By: David Deschesne
Editor/Publisher, Fort Fairfield Journal
May 22, 2019
The other day, I overheard a conversation where one person asserted the border wall proposed by President Trump would “break our ties with Mexico.” I chose to stay out of the conversation and continue along with my work to see where it went. Beyond that brief statement being repeated several times, the person didn’t offer much to support his position.
I don’t watch mainstream television network news - haven’t for nearly 20 years - because it is so overtly socialistic and propagandistic for the Democrats. However, with that said, I can spot a sound bite when I hear one and the “break our ties with Mexico” quip is quite obviously a propaganda line being spouted by the liberal establishment on the television brainwashing seminars (they used to be called newscasts).
That this person only repeated the line several times and offered no further original thoughts of his own to back up the position leads me to believe he’s been lured into the propaganda trap by ceaseless hours of watching television “news” broadcasts and talk shows; having ideas implanted into his thought process that are not originally his own.
So, the question is begged. Will a border wall break our ties with Mexico? Before that can be truthfully answered, one has to first establish what the function of that wall would primarily be and if the ties it breaks would be beneficial or detrimental to our side of the border.
A Couple Simple Analogies
My wife and I keep the doors in our house locked all the time - while we’re away and when we’re home. It could be argued using the above logic that we’re “breaking our ties” with our friends, family and neighbors. But, are we really?
If a family member of ours comes to visit, we will surely let them in. If a neighbor or friend comes over with amiable conversation, they’re certainly welcome, too. What the locked door does is allows us some degree of control over who and when entry is made to our home and it is done so under our terms. There are malevolent people in the world, some of whom do harm to others merely to pass the time. A locked door also controls the entry of those people to our home (as well as firearms if they forcefully enter with evil intent).
Now, that locked door controls the entry of both friend and foe. It also keeps out unwanted neutral parties, such as salesmen, from simply walking in unannounced. Is this reasonable? I think so. Most people typically don’t want to be bothered after 7pm so, a locked door controls who gets to come in and who doesn’t. I think this is reasonable and has never “broken our ties” with our friends or family.
What about the schools? Does locking their doors to the outside world and selectively admitting visitors somehow “break the ties” of the local community? Nope.
At Fort Fairfield’s schools you can go to the front door, ring the buzzer, state your business to the secretary and be admitted if you have a reason to be there. It’s the same as my wife and I keeping our doors locked all the time. This enables the school to exercise a degree of control over who gains entry and who is kept out (or at least slowed down). Given the day and age we’re living in where psychotropic drugs - both illegal and legal - are being consumed like Halloween candy, coupled with the incessant participation in first-person shooter video games and the personal disconnect caused by social media, the rise of violence against society has naturally risen. It had to, but I won’t wax philosophically on this point because it’s beyond the scope of this editorial.
Simply put, our home and our schools are locked - that is, they have a “wall” separating the internal occupants from those outside and the outsiders are only admitted by the one in control of the door. In a sense, we have created “border walls” in miniature in order to control who gets to enter our personal space, while at the same time prohibiting those we don’t want. I don’t think that is an unreasonable arrangement. If someone wants to be admitted to our home, or the local school, they can be under controlled circumstances. This keeps the “bad guys” out and at least provides for a greater degree of personal safety and security for all involved.
The Wall
Now, to expand the previous analogy to a macroscopic scale, the U.S. is like our home or the school. People are allowed in every day at designated Ports of Entry as they check through with a Customs officer. A Port of Entry is like a door and that is where people who want to enter the U.S. can do so legally. The Customs officer is in a sense like the school secretary unlocking the door and allowing a visitor into the school; or my wife and I choosing to unlock our door and allow someone into our home.
However, unlike the home or school analogy, the “doors” that are our Ports of Entry are only as good as the walls that surround them. If I kept the doors in our house locked, but only had a dotted line painted on the ground where the physical walls should be, the locked doors wouldn’t be of much use, would they? If the school kept their doors locked, but had no physical exterior walls there really wouldn’t be much use for a locked door, would there?
The U.S. border is like a house with doors but no walls. Those who choose to enter the U.S. legally choose to do so by crossing at a duly authorized Port of Entry. Under this arrangement, we allow thousands of visitors per day into our Union for both personal and business reasons.
However, those who don’t want to go through the process of legally entering try to gain entry illegally by stepping over that “painted dotted line” on the ground and sneaking in.
Now, we don’t exactly have a literal painted dotted line on the ground to keep unwanted people out. The U.S. Border Patrol has installed extremely sophisticated sensors along the entire border of both Mexico and Canada. They routinely monitor those sensors and physically patrol the border in order to keep a watch out for those who try to gain entry to the U.S. by covert means. These are the people we don’t really want in - the people who start out disrespecting us and our laws by making their first act upon entry to our Union one of defiance to our rules of admission. It’s the same as a stranger attempting to gain access to your home by quietly climbing through a back window, rather than knocking on your front door and asking for permission to enter. Do you think those sneaking into your house would have your best interests at heart?
Who to Keep Out
Our Canadian neighbors to the North generally respect our Ports of Entry and use them to legally gain entry to the U.S. Nobody from Canada is coming to the U.S. to retire on our welfare system because Canada’s free ride is even more cushy than ours. But, those people below our southern border are drawn to the land of milk and honey where they can sneak in, get a couple dozen Social Security numbers and begin receiving multiple welfare checks and food stamps in perpetuity. They don’t check in at the Port of Entry and they don’t attempt to gain citizenship or a Visa legally. They simply choose to exploit our social welfare system without contributing anything meaningful to our society. These people would be analogous to those sneaking into your house via a back window in order to steal your money and eat all your food.
Another group of people who are not desirable are gangsters, such as the infamous MS-13. Where New York City has its Mafia, Chicago has the Mob, Mexico has MS-13. This band of ruffians runs drugs, guns, sex slaves and all sorts of vice. It’s even been suggested they’re partially responsible for the wholesale murder of young girls in Juarez, Mexico and the surrounding area where hundreds of girls have been found ritually murdered over the years with no interest by the local police in those areas to pursue any sort of meaningful investigation.
These gang bangers exploit our lax immigration rules by kidnapping young children, showing up at the border and claiming the child to be their own. They then make a request for amnesty where they are given a court date then released into the U.S. never to be seen or heard from again. In many cases the kidnapped child is either sold as a sex slave, or simply killed when they are no longer needed by their captor. The gang banger can then have free reign inside the U.S. to ply his trade.
Lately, President Trump has been cracking down on this type of exploitation of our border. But, the Democrats, who are looking for anything to whine and complain about, take what should be a normal response by a responsible leader, to keep some sort of control over who is admitted into the country, and turn it into some sort of scandal. The mainstream news media then allows them unlimited amounts of time to whine and complain about the evil atrocities of keeping bad people out of the U.S. when in reality it is they who set up a system whereby those evil and malevolent people were able to easily enter the U.S. in the first place. Perhaps all the noise and cacophony on the part of the Democrats and left-wing socialists is to conceal their role in the illegal immigrant mess we’re suffering under today.
Who to Allow in
There are many immigrants who come to the U.S. legally. They enter with the proper paperwork, check in at a Port of Entry, work for a paycheck and contribute to society. These are the people we do want to come in and they will not be affected by a border wall. In this respect, a border wall will not “break our ties with Mexico.” Far from it.
We see immigrants from Mexico and other South American countries working in our fields here in Northern Maine throughout the summer. While most of them don’t speak English that well, I have found them to be as a whole courteous, respectful of their host country and very hard working. Some of the people I’ve spoken with who have hired these immigrants have said they work better, harder, faster and more efficiently than the locally-grown workforce we have here today.
I think our social welfare system was designed to make us soft. Young adults today simply get on welfare as an early retirement plan rather than actually get up in the morning with a purpose and go out and work for a living. But, this isn’t an editorial about how welfare enslaves the masses and trains them to be less productive, so I will resist the urge to digress.
Entering Legally
It’s been suggested to me that we reestablish the process of allowing immigrants in that Ellis Island, New York employed a hundred years ago.
To that, I respond we still have those processes in place - though, they have been more modernized.
Anyone who wants to come to the U.S. legally, to either live or work, or even become a full-fledged citizen can do it. There is a process - has been for years. President Trump isn’t suggesting that nobody be allowed in anymore. That’s ridiculous, but it’s what the mainstream media is attempting to sell to a naïve, gullible, pliable listening audience.
What is being proposed with a physical wall is to close up the holes where people who don’t want to obey the rules will have a harder time gaining entry. The border wall would function essentially as the physical walls of our homes and schools - to control who gets admitted and who doesn’t.
I don’t know why Democrats are having such a hard time with this. I really don’t. Surely, they have homes with walls; they support keeping teachers and school children safe by maintaining school walls and locked exterior doors. People are still admitted to homes and school buildings even with locked doors - but there is a degree of control over who is allowed.
So, why are Democrats having such a hard time with the concept of a border wall that is proposed primarily to keep bad people and law-breakers out of the U.S.? They didn’t always oppose those prudent measures. I won’t bore you with the litany of Democrats who supported increased border security under presidential impersonator, Barrack Hussein-Obama, but I think Fox News has a clip on YouTube that you can search to find sound bites of all the usual Democrat suspects claiming, just a few years ago, the need for increased border security and, yes, even a wall.
Democrats are grasping at straws to find something to latch onto to make President Trump ineffective, or at least seem that way. Is this really the recipe for success of a nation? I don’t think bickering, backbiting, whining and complaining about a subject that should be in agreement by all - border security - merely for the purpose of making the other side look or seem bad is a very productive use of our time and voters would be well-informed to bounce those troublemakers out of office if they can allow themselves to be unlatched from the mainstream media propaganda stream long enough to think objectively for themselves.
Home security, school security and border security all share the same aspects and the same goals: allow good people in, keep bad people out. Pie in the Sky Democrat ideals such as abolishing the borders, abolishing Customs and Immigration and allowing everyone in with no checks and balances is as irresponsible and dangerous as leaving our homes and schools unlocked and allowing any criminal or gang-banger in to have their way. This is not the recipe for security, peace and prosperity; it’s a recipe for dissolution and disaster. Why do people continue to vote for a political party with such a defeatist, self-destructive ideology? The only reason I can think of is the voters have been programmed by a rogue mainstream media who is allowing enemy infiltrators to espouse their propagandist messages in order to subdue and eventually overwhelm the U.S. and turn it into a third-world cesspool. This is why they don’t want a wall to keep bad people out.
