I don’t know. I haven’t been there. But it took two or three years of overcoming all sorts of courts and objections before being allowed to start on the ‘big beautiful fence’ . One head of the Border Agency (or some such) recently tweeted that the fence was already helping to reduce the number of people, drugs and trafficked kids coming into the US. He was blocked by Twitter.
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
It remains a work in progress. Ironically, in cities where Trump is not necessarily beloved, quite a few “walls” are going up in the form of boarded windows and doors in anticipation of the mob. But, people in those same cities tell me that walls do not work.
Well, people similarly board and barricade their houses against tropical storms. Should the USA spend £6bn building some of a wall along the Eastern seaboard? Boards and walls are not the same thing, also both your metaphor and my metaphor are stupid.
Jerry Carroll
3 years ago
There are 389 miles of wall built by Trump against the unrelenting opposition of the Democrats, who see the poor, uneducated and illegal as vital to their political future. The article reads like it was written by a breezy tourist who talked to a few people one morning, spent 14 minutes on Google research and turned it in an hour later. Fast work, if not good.
Alex Mitchell
3 years ago
Whatever your views, Trump was elected on a platform that was strongly centered on this and then the establishment blocked it. Sounds disturbingly familiar to the horribly protracted Brexit saga.
7882 fremic
3 years ago
Where is the wall? Ask the Democrat majority House of Representatives, they have made scuppering it job one.
Underreported- every Obama and Clinton policy that was scuppered is marked in history but the delay in getting the ‘wall’ started is caused by the House. However, I would be interested to see what was spent after all the deals, private funding and Presidential Edicts.
M Spahn
3 years ago
On the one hand, we have all sorts of people arguing the wall would be ineffective when what they really mean is they find it morally objectionable. They said Israel’s wall would never curb terrorism and then lo and behold it did. I don’t think the wall is the slightest bit morally objectionable.
On the other hand, I think in this case the preponderance of evidence really does suggest the wall is not particularly effective, and the effort should go into improved border surveillance, and measures to keep people from working easily, overstaying visas, and clogging up the courts with bogus asylum claims, if we are really serious about getting illegal immigration under control.
Jordan Flower
3 years ago
I quite enjoyed that Biden rally last week where all the 2 dozen (or 3 dozen?) attendees had “social distance circles” drawn out on the ground for them. Apart from the fact that the edge of each circle was about 2 feet apart, they seemed to be very comfortable with the idea of drawing a big thick border around every person, for the sake of protection.
A) Since when is anyone saying rub out the national border? b) why is it funny to point out every time non-republicans and people against the Mexico border wall would use a boundary to delineate two things. People are also not going to knock down the walls of their houses to show their opposition to the practicality of a border wall, they are also not going to build a wall around their car to make it safer to drive. Before you say, I’m British and have no skin in your game, but your argument is bad.
re: A) – Perhaps you haven’t heard the chants of American far leftists “no border, no wall, no USA at all”. These aren’t some fringe PDX outliers; they’re all over the country. We have politicians who are openly pro open borders, a position vehemently opposed by Bernie only 4 years ago, calling it a libertarian “koch brothers scheme”. Even Bernie knew that to implement a generous welfare state, restricted immigration is a necessity. Re: B) – It’s funny because we were told for four years that suddenly because Dromf wanted it, walls were somehow “racist”. Did that make the existing 700 miles built under previous presidents retroactively racist? Or just the portions that Trump reenforced? It’s funny because since about 2000, border walls in the entire world have increased by some exponential factor of ten. Are all of these countries also racist? Why haven’t all of these other nations been enlightened by the American left who baselessly claim WaLLs doNT wOrK. It’s funny because nobody gave a sh*t when the 2014 immigration crisis hit, and Obama reopened the family detention facilities in Dilley and Karnes City, TX, that were abysmally awful living conditions, requiring children to be separated to be put in more humane conditions, due to the Flores settlement (which is the same set of laws that required child separation under Trump). No one cared that he deported more than any other president in history, including Trump’s current numbers, leaving many children orphaned. This entire discussion is completely partisan and politically opportunistic, dripping with hypocrisy. Not sure why you’d need to build a wall around your car, when your car is already, quite literally, a 3D barrier on wheels. I’m fully aware a house wall and a border aren’t the same thing. But they operate on the same principle.
Paul Hunt
3 years ago
There’s a great BBC documentary with comedian Susan Perkins, Sue Perkins: Along the US-Mexico Border. She is an unapologetic softy who is just meeting people as she gets driven from Tijuana to El Paso and gets sadder and sadder as she sees more and more structures hurting people in the US and in Mexico. Not sharp journalism but just a funny Brit’s journey which allows her to actually talk to people about what’s happening now.
Andrew D
3 years ago
The Great Wall of China is a wall. The Berlin Wall was a wall. This isn’t a wall, it’s a crappy-looking fence
Your aesthetic sense aside, it deters illegal immigration, the only thing it is meant to do.
Robin Lambert
3 years ago
The Wall is there,but As Trump respects ‘Private Land” he has to overcome objectors, I’m sure EU open borders policy will Change…Recent Terrorist islamic outrages in Paris,Nice,Vienna citizens will demand their governments are more Circumspect on who enters the country!
I do not see the EU slowing on open borders. They have outsourced their immigration policy to people smugglers, and I very much doubt they will take it back/
This is a statement that taints the debate and becomes the focus of ‘the libtards’- it’s prejudiced and racist and factually miles off the mark. 1. It starts with the idea that people are dying to take up arms and overthrow the government to install a racist despot and end capitalism which (I’m sorry to tell you) needs the foreign labour. 2. Closed borders don’t stop terrorism, there is no one place the terrorists live that you can encircle and keep safe (Except Palestine of course…) Except in countries that have had populist takeovers already (Poland, Austria etc), the EU Council is well aware that terrorists don’t sneak into Europe on smallboats, scimitars between their teeth, and they aren’t sneaking into the USA from Mexico: (why would they, the guns, money etc they need are already in America not in the Mexican desert, not to mention that most terrorism is Domestic according to data from CSIS the US’s top bipartisan security thinktank) (https://www.theguardian.com….
In Europe young men are radicalised online and if they travel abroad its by plane, and they receive money from an organised criminal group, so these organisations don’t need to risk life a death crossing an actual sea or desert to get into Europe. Just the first ones I checked, the 2020 Vienna shooter was born in Vienna, the 2005 London bombers were born in northern England, the Paris bombers were Belgian and French. The Madrid Bombers were a mix of Morrocans and Spanish, the Charlie Hebdo shooters were Parisian. Just to set the record straight.
I don’t know. I haven’t been there. But it took two or three years of overcoming all sorts of courts and objections before being allowed to start on the ‘big beautiful fence’ . One head of the Border Agency (or some such) recently tweeted that the fence was already helping to reduce the number of people, drugs and trafficked kids coming into the US. He was blocked by Twitter.
It remains a work in progress. Ironically, in cities where Trump is not necessarily beloved, quite a few “walls” are going up in the form of boarded windows and doors in anticipation of the mob. But, people in those same cities tell me that walls do not work.
Well, people similarly board and barricade their houses against tropical storms. Should the USA spend £6bn building some of a wall along the Eastern seaboard? Boards and walls are not the same thing, also both your metaphor and my metaphor are stupid.
There are 389 miles of wall built by Trump against the unrelenting opposition of the Democrats, who see the poor, uneducated and illegal as vital to their political future. The article reads like it was written by a breezy tourist who talked to a few people one morning, spent 14 minutes on Google research and turned it in an hour later. Fast work, if not good.
Whatever your views, Trump was elected on a platform that was strongly centered on this and then the establishment blocked it. Sounds disturbingly familiar to the horribly protracted Brexit saga.
Where is the wall? Ask the Democrat majority House of Representatives, they have made scuppering it job one.
Underreported- every Obama and Clinton policy that was scuppered is marked in history but the delay in getting the ‘wall’ started is caused by the House. However, I would be interested to see what was spent after all the deals, private funding and Presidential Edicts.
On the one hand, we have all sorts of people arguing the wall would be ineffective when what they really mean is they find it morally objectionable. They said Israel’s wall would never curb terrorism and then lo and behold it did. I don’t think the wall is the slightest bit morally objectionable.
On the other hand, I think in this case the preponderance of evidence really does suggest the wall is not particularly effective, and the effort should go into improved border surveillance, and measures to keep people from working easily, overstaying visas, and clogging up the courts with bogus asylum claims, if we are really serious about getting illegal immigration under control.
I quite enjoyed that Biden rally last week where all the 2 dozen (or 3 dozen?) attendees had “social distance circles” drawn out on the ground for them. Apart from the fact that the edge of each circle was about 2 feet apart, they seemed to be very comfortable with the idea of drawing a big thick border around every person, for the sake of protection.
A) Since when is anyone saying rub out the national border? b) why is it funny to point out every time non-republicans and people against the Mexico border wall would use a boundary to delineate two things. People are also not going to knock down the walls of their houses to show their opposition to the practicality of a border wall, they are also not going to build a wall around their car to make it safer to drive. Before you say, I’m British and have no skin in your game, but your argument is bad.
re: A) – Perhaps you haven’t heard the chants of American far leftists “no border, no wall, no USA at all”. These aren’t some fringe PDX outliers; they’re all over the country. We have politicians who are openly pro open borders, a position vehemently opposed by Bernie only 4 years ago, calling it a libertarian “koch brothers scheme”. Even Bernie knew that to implement a generous welfare state, restricted immigration is a necessity.
Re: B) – It’s funny because we were told for four years that suddenly because Dromf wanted it, walls were somehow “racist”. Did that make the existing 700 miles built under previous presidents retroactively racist? Or just the portions that Trump reenforced?
It’s funny because since about 2000, border walls in the entire world have increased by some exponential factor of ten. Are all of these countries also racist? Why haven’t all of these other nations been enlightened by the American left who baselessly claim WaLLs doNT wOrK.
It’s funny because nobody gave a sh*t when the 2014 immigration crisis hit, and Obama reopened the family detention facilities in Dilley and Karnes City, TX, that were abysmally awful living conditions, requiring children to be separated to be put in more humane conditions, due to the Flores settlement (which is the same set of laws that required child separation under Trump). No one cared that he deported more than any other president in history, including Trump’s current numbers, leaving many children orphaned.
This entire discussion is completely partisan and politically opportunistic, dripping with hypocrisy.
Not sure why you’d need to build a wall around your car, when your car is already, quite literally, a 3D barrier on wheels.
I’m fully aware a house wall and a border aren’t the same thing. But they operate on the same principle.
There’s a great BBC documentary with comedian Susan Perkins, Sue Perkins: Along the US-Mexico Border. She is an unapologetic softy who is just meeting people as she gets driven from Tijuana to El Paso and gets sadder and sadder as she sees more and more structures hurting people in the US and in Mexico. Not sharp journalism but just a funny Brit’s journey which allows her to actually talk to people about what’s happening now.
The Great Wall of China is a wall. The Berlin Wall was a wall. This isn’t a wall, it’s a crappy-looking fence
Your aesthetic sense aside, it deters illegal immigration, the only thing it is meant to do.
The Wall is there,but As Trump respects ‘Private Land” he has to overcome objectors,
I’m sure EU open borders policy will Change…Recent Terrorist islamic outrages in Paris,Nice,Vienna citizens will demand their governments are more Circumspect on who enters the country!
I do not see the EU slowing on open borders. They have outsourced their immigration policy to people smugglers, and I very much doubt they will take it back/
This is a statement that taints the debate and becomes the focus of ‘the libtards’- it’s prejudiced and racist and factually miles off the mark. 1. It starts with the idea that people are dying to take up arms and overthrow the government to install a racist despot and end capitalism which (I’m sorry to tell you) needs the foreign labour.
2. Closed borders don’t stop terrorism, there is no one place the terrorists live that you can encircle and keep safe (Except Palestine of course…) Except in countries that have had populist takeovers already (Poland, Austria etc), the EU Council is well aware that terrorists don’t sneak into Europe on smallboats, scimitars between their teeth, and they aren’t sneaking into the USA from Mexico: (why would they, the guns, money etc they need are already in America not in the Mexican desert, not to mention that most terrorism is Domestic according to data from CSIS the US’s top bipartisan security thinktank) (https://www.theguardian.com….
In Europe young men are radicalised online and if they travel abroad its by plane, and they receive money from an organised criminal group, so these organisations don’t need to risk life a death crossing an actual sea or desert to get into Europe. Just the first ones I checked, the 2020 Vienna shooter was born in Vienna, the 2005 London bombers were born in northern England, the Paris bombers were Belgian and French. The Madrid Bombers were a mix of Morrocans and Spanish, the Charlie Hebdo shooters were Parisian. Just to set the record straight.