Countering the Sanctuary City Gambit

As a direct result of HRC’s loss and President Trump’s election, a fair number of cities controlled by Democratic politicians have climbed on the “sanctuary city” train.  They’ve come online to resist the deportation of non-citizens who’ve entered the country without permission, and have offered their protection in the sense kingdoms of old would offer sanctuary to monks, and other travelers who sought their protection.  The difference this time is purely political rather than humanitarian motives of the Lords and Ladies of these cities.

This week, like almost every other week, President Trump created a firestorm on Twitter®, when he suggested he would acquiesce to the Dem’s position and instead of deporting illegals caught in border crossings he would ship them to the cities that had offered them sanctuary. 

Oh, the humanity!  Oh, the outrage! Oh, the immorality!

It is always amusing when politicians and Hollywood actors claim the proposed Presidential actions are immoral.  The same people who have voted to deny human rights to viable human fetuses, who’ve demonstrated their own personal greed, and encourage rape (of the right people), think they have the moral high ground and can define the common morality?  Give me a break.

If you don’t really want these migrating humans in your back yard, then why did you make the offer?  Oh, that’s right, it was really just something you did to make you appear to be more virtuous and appeal to the illegal voters you seek to gain. 

Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, noted the suggestion by the President wasn’t really something he could actually pull off because of the logistics of moving all those people, but his tweet was really a brilliant way to highlight the hypocrisy of the left and perhaps move the discussion of immigration off the current topics of border walls and cages.

Walls - Good and Bad

Walls

We are in the midst of a great political debate over the issue of approved and unapproved immigration, and like most things in today’s world it comes down to something as innocuous as a physical barrier at our border.  Why is this?  My guess is a simple one, the propaganda machines can fit the argument for or against a wall into their 15-second sound bites.

We hear on the one side about the crisis in border security that would be solved by a wall, while the counter arguments span the gamut from “there is no crisis” to a claim the wall is “immoral.”  I would like to take a few minutes to review what walls are and can be, and perhaps remove the idea that they can be immoral, for morality is truly a human thing.  A wall has no humanity it is just a barrier serving a defined purpose.

Of course, walls can be used to define borders, this has been true since the beginnings of empire.  Take the Great Wall of China.  It remains today as a testament to the willingness of the Chinese Emperors to define and defend their lands.

Walls can also be expressions of man’s pettiness and incivility to their neighbors.

But walls are also reflections of so much more of the human condition.  They can serve to represent the faith of a people in their God,

Or separate some from society.

They can help a nation heal from a tragic war,

Or inspire a people to continue to fight for independence

They can keep a people enslaved by a government that sees them as the property of the state.

Or they can serve as a canvas for an artist's expressions of humanity.

Walls protect us from the noise of our inventions.

 Or define the boundaries of our games.

Walls can protect what we hold most important.

Or just keep our neighbors from bothering us.

So, we come down to the final question.  Should we have a border wall?  I am not sure how to break this to a lot of you, but we already do, the question is not should we have one, but how much of one should we have and maintain?

Today’s fight is just the latest in a test of wills between two parties who see little value in efficient government.  Rather, they seek to dominate the political arena to gain the wealth it offers
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Should We Build a Wall?

Sometimes I can only shake my head.  I’ve seen a number of postings on FB about how walls are ineffective and can be defeated.  Some have gone so far as to invoke God as being against walls.  It gives me reason to question the sanity of those who are opposed to a particular wall, or really a political belief in sovereignty yet are unable to make rational arguments supporting their position.  It is far easier to stand on a corner and shout the other side is insane, than it is to decide, perhaps they are not.

We can start with simple yes or no questions but regardless of the answers, it will never alter the positions of those who are for or against a border wall, because the time for logical debate is long past and neither side is willing to concede they are maybe wrong (even a little bit).

The real issue at hand isn’t whether or not we should build a wall, or even if walls are effective or not, those are only wonderfully convenient talking points to mask the foundational question, “Should the laws of a sovereign nation be subject to the whims of outside political activists who have gathered together to trample on the laws they dislike?” Unfortunately, that question is unanswerable in the 15-second sound bites we’ve now come to accept from the media as they cull through the politicians and other elite seeking just the right 15-seconds to inflame their viewers.

After the 2016 election, the Congress created a Special Investigation into this question as it dealt with the allegation of Russian influence/corruption of the voting process.  So far, after two years of investigation and some $30 million dollars, there remains no clear indication whatever Russia did – had any distinct impact on the national vote.

It has long been said we are a nation of sheep and there is a lot of truth to that, for like sheep all most of us want to do is live our lives in peace and let someone else guide or guard the flock.  The politicians and the power-elite know this and gain their power from the flock as they drive them in whatever direction suits their particular need.

So, what is the answer?  Unlike others who suggest they speak for God, I don’t know.  What I do know are the following facts. 

• Over the past 200 years, America has been in the enviable position of not spend massive amounts of energy and capital guarding its borders.  We had acceptable relationships with both Mexico and Canada and none of us saw much need to invade the other.  Sure, we had entry points and we had coastal defenses in case those pesky Europeans wanted to invade, but for the most part, everyone knew the rules and followed them.  Canada kept the Arctic hoards from coming south, and Mexico kept the Incas from coming north.
• Immigrants of the past are not the same as immigrants of today.  There were rules that were followed, and for the most part, they assimilated into the culture adding to our society with their foods, their art, and their histories.  Today’s immigrants are overwhelming the communities as many try and force their culture on the natives without a real desire to assimilate.  At the same time, we native Americans seem to have lost our identities and shared cultural values as we fracture into ever-smaller groups, each demanding a superior place in the social fabric.
• The historical labels of Liberal and Conservative are no longer valid descriptors.  Liberals today are intolerant of those who oppose their views and seek power through manipulation.  Conservatives have no true sense of the natural evolution of society and tend toward knee-jerk reactions against the more extreme social changes.  Labels remain only so those in power can herd the right sheep into the appropriate flocks.
• As long as America remains a viable market for addictive drugs the flow of those drugs from their various points of origin will continue.  The by-product of this is the issue of human trafficking and the increased expenses of border security.  So far, every strategy the US government has tried in its “War on Drugs” has failed.  We’ve filled our jails and watched as lives are lost to the addiction.  I am not sure the government can ever fix this problem, for its root is in a moral choice each individual makes and regardless of what politicians may say the Government is amoral.

So, at the end of the day should we build a wall or should we just do away with Homeland Security?  I guess the answer depends on who you think the new arrivals will vote for.

Borders versus the Boarders

These days we regularly hear about the porous nature of our southern border.  Far more so than in history and the reasons are fairly simple to understand, but before we talk about them we should consider some of that history.  I know, I know, no one likes to consider what was as we talk about what is, but bear with me on this.

When we became a nation, we had the British colony of Canada to the north, one really big ocean (and the Gulf of Mexico) and a whole lot of land to the west filled with the natives we had not yet met or displaced.  True – there were a bunch of French guys running around trading with the natives and France and Spain kept swapping the land back and forth, but it was mostly empty so it wasn’t that big a deal for a nation trying to figure out what being a nation meant.

Then we began to expand, and Tommy J heard Napoleon wanted some cash to invade England and was looking to sell off the land he’d just gotten back from Spain.  Tommy J saw this as a win-win, so for the bargain basement price of around 5.5 cents a square mile we got land that formed most of what are now 13 states.  Of course, no one asked the natives how they felt about this, but that is another story.  At the end of the day we still had the pesky British to the north, an ocean to the east and south, only now the land to the west was claimed by Spain.

At the time the only people migrating anywhere was us.  By us I mean the U.S.  We were welcoming people arriving by boat from Europe, still had people arriving from Africa (although not voluntarily), and had large families seeking new lands for their homesteads so we began to push west.  At the time the only people concerned with immigration were the British and Spanish as they tried to keep us from invading their holdings in North America.  Interestingly we fought additional wars with both of them over this whole manifest destiny and U.S. rights thing.  First the British in 1812, and then Mexico in 1846.  (Of course, Texas had its own war with Mexico, but that too is another story.)  After the Mexico thing, we got to thinking about actually defining our borders, so we and everyone else (except the native Americans) finally settled on them by 1850.  (I know there were interim agreements along the way, but it wasn’t until after the Mexican-American war that we actually sat down with the English to sort out the northern border all the way to the Pacific.)

Since we had all this land, not so many people, and the government didn’t give too much thought about drugs and whiskey (other than for tax purposes), the whole idea of border security was pretty much confined to the folks along the border.  Once we got that whole thing with the 49^th parallel sorted out we didn’t worry too much about the British (Canadians), and except for the Rio Grande occasionally shifting its path the Mexico thing was pretty stable as well.  Then we had a civil war and the issues of border security raised its ugly head as we in the North tried to make sure the South didn’t get any outside help.  “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” came from one of those efforts as Davy Farragut attempted to close down the port of Mobile, Alabama.

After the war, we all pretty well agreed on the idea that while borders were important, ours were pretty safe since it didn’t look like either the Canadians or Mexicans were all the anxious to invade us.  We put some big guns up along the coast just in case the pesky Europeans got some idea we were easy, but we controlled the European and Asian immigration through the major seaports of the east and west coasts.  This seemed to work pretty well for the next hundred years or so and then air travel came around and we had to add a bunch of immigration control to the major airports.  But the borders with Canada and Mexico remained pretty much as it had been with entry points every so often and agents mostly looking for contraband going in both directions. 

As an aside, Prohibition had pointed out the porous nature of our borders, but when we repealed the amendment we went back to everything was okay.  Both the Democrats and the Republicans pretty much agreed “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” or “we have better things to do.”

Then we declared a war on drugs and all the unlearned lessons of Prohibition and smuggling came back into play.  Along the way, slavery made a reappearance primarily in the sex trade, but also in some other areas like housekeeping for the rich people in the big cities.  With each new revelation, Congress did what it does and threw money at the problem, trying to figure out how to keep up with the entrepreneurs who were making millions in moving people and drugs from South America to meet the demands in North America.

One day fairly recently, the Democrats and their party looked around and noticed their historical base was disappearing as they moved further and further left in their socio-economic positions.  This meant they had to either change those positions or find a new base.  They’ve chosen to find a new base – people who’ve come to this country without following the legal process.  Republican’s call these people illegal aliens.  Democrats call them unregistered voters.  This fall it will be interesting to see what the majority of voters call them.

President Trump came into the 2016 election playing to the economic concerns of the average middle-class voter, promising to improve the economy, restore pride in the country, and build a wall to stem the migration of people from South and Central America.  So far, he’s done a pretty reasonable job of improving the economy, the pride question is still up for debate since ½ the country seems to be deranged in their hatred of him as a human being let alone as President, and the wall remains on his to-do list.

For what it’s worth -- I think building a wall will do next to nothing to stop the migration of people from the South.  The only way that happens is if the economic picture for Central America and Mexico improves so there are fewer reasons for the people to leave.  That, unfortunately, is a problem we can’t fix, and it doesn’t seem the authorities in the affected countries are all that eager to change the status quo.

So, for the foreseeable future, we will get millions of new boarders here in the land of opportunity.  If the democratic party gets its way they will all vote.  The question is will they vote democratic, or will they see other options as providing a better chance of improving their economic prospects?