Six on "the Wall" and immigration: Donald Trump and His Team of Morons; not writing off Donald Trump’s border wall just yet;
panaritisp
"There have been many policy disasters over the course of U.S. history. It’s hard, however, to think of a calamity as gratuitous, an error as unforced, as the current federal shutdown.
Nor can I think of another disaster as thoroughly personal, as completely owned by one man. When Donald Trump told Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, “I will be the one to shut it down,” he was being completely accurate — although he went on to promise that “I’m not going to blame you for it,” which was a lie.
Still, no man is an island, although Trump comes closer than most. You can’t fully make sense of his policy pratfalls without acknowledging the extraordinary quality of the people with whom he has surrounded himself. And by “extraordinary,” of course, I mean extraordinarily low quality. Lincoln had a team of rivals; Trump has a team of morons.
"Since ancient times walls have principally served to keep citizens or subjects safe by excluding all kinds of invader. Jail walls aside, walls to keep people in, rather than out, have been less common. They came to the fore in the Cold War, when totalitarian regimes from Berlin to Pyongyang were forced to fence in their populations to prevent them from voting with their feet.Those sections of the Iron Curtain were what gave walls such a bad name in our time. It was not only Ronald Reagan who condemned them. Western leaders from Churchill to the present Pope have repeatedly inveighed against political barriers. And let’s not forget Pink Floyd.
The notion of a world sans frontières was always a hopelessly naive one. It was easy to be against walls when they were imprisoning East Germans and North Koreans. It is a lot harder when the world’s most objectionable regimes make almost no effort to contain their citizens behind borders.
All over the world, people are on the move from messed-up countries – and there is remarkably little to stop them. According to a Gallup survey in 2017, more than 700 million adults around the world would like to move permanently to another country. Of that vast number, more than a fifth (21 per cent) say their first choice would be to move to the United States. The proportion who name an European Union country as their dream home is higher: 23 per cent.
Yet, recent polling by the Pew Research Center points to an equal and opposite resistance to mass migration by the people in the preferred destinations. Across 27 countries, 45 per cent of those surveyed said fewer or no immigrants should be allowed to move to their country, while 36 per cent said they wanted about the same number of immigrants. Only 14 per cent said their countries should take in more immigrants. For the United States, the proportion wanting more was 24 per cent – only Spaniards are more welcoming – but that’s still less than a quarter."
"He was 21 years old. He told me about his life in Guatemala, of what he had left behind. His story was not surprising to me. Oppressive poverty, violence, lack of opportunities—these were the common factors in the decision to migrate. It was the reason why, while we were flying on this airplane, thousands of people were walking across Mexico to the US border to ask for asylum.
“Have you heard of the caravan?” he asked me.
“The caravans,” I corrected. “The third one left yesterday.”
“Right,” he said. “I’ve been watching the news at the detention center. The agents joked that they would never be out of work thanks to the caravans and those to come.”
I didn’t know what to say. Did he know about the troops Trump had dispatched to the border? Did he know of our president’s hateful rhetoric, conjured to fuel the fear and hatred of Central American immigrants like him?
I didn’t ask him those questions. Instead, I offered more food—a can of tuna and crackers—as an apology.
He shook his head vehemently.
“You don’t like tuna?” I asked.
“That’s all the smuggler gave us,” he said. “During the journey, we ate tuna for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The smell will bring back bad memories.”
He told me about crossing the river from Guatemala to Mexico. During his swim across, the corn tortillas he’d packed had taken on water and were nothing but a ball of watery dough that he had to throw them away. He’d had nothing but tuna from then on. When they were caught in Mexico, his smuggler abandoned him. When he was released, he continued alone to the US border, where he was taken by Border Patrol and locked up in a detention center. He had two older siblings living in the US who had hired a lawyer to help him with his asylum case. He would have to go to court soon. Only then would he know if he would be allowed to stay. In the meantime, he would live with his siblings.
“They live near LA,” he told me. I was confused at this. He was on my flight to Sacramento, with a layover in Dallas. Why wouldn’t his siblings fly him to Los Angeles? My question worried him, and after he showed me his paperwork, I realized his mistake. “They live four and a half hours north of LA.” I told him. “Now I understand why you are flying to Sacramento. It’s closer to where they live.”
“I’m glad you understand,” he said. “Because I still don’t.” He laughed and ate my donuts.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll make sure you find your way.”
“Were you born here?” he asked a few minutes later.
“No, I crossed the border when I was nine and a half years old.”
“Alone?”
I thought of the thousands of unaccompanied minors who’d come these last few years on their own, all alone. I’d been lucky. “My father came back to Mexico for me. So he was with me the whole journey. I’ve been here for 33 years now.”
I didn’t tell him that I had arrived in this country when things were different—when a Republican president had signed a law that forgave three million people, including both my parents, for coming into the country illegally and had allowed them to remain as legal permanent residents. I didn’t tell him how free and limitless I felt as a 15-year-old, when our green cards arrived. I didn’t tell him how I took that green card and ran with it to my American Dream—all the way to being a college graduate and a best-selling author."
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