Trump's borderline reality

A recent poll by the Pew Research Center reveals that support for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border remains strong.

Building such a wall is unrealistic.

The research by Pew was reported Oct. 8 in the LA Times with a piece written by David Lauter, a Washington-based reporter for the Times.

The poll showed that general public support for a border wall hasn't changed much, with just under half of the country supporting the construction of a wall. 

But a look inside the numbers shows that members of both parties are going in the opposition direction on the issue.

Support for a wall has increased among Republicans, rising from 65 percent in 2007 to 73 percent now. That's an increase of eight percent. Nearly three of every four Republicans support a wall. 

But support for the wall has dropped by an equal amount among Democrats. They've gone in the opposite direction, from 37 percent supporting the wall down to 29 percent. That's less than one in three Democrats.

The overall result is that support remains unchanged.

Driving the rise in support of the wall are the belligerent remarks made by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. He falsely believes that building a wall will solve the country's immigration problem. 

Trump thinks a border wall is a simple thing. It's not.

As I wrote in The Dangerous Divide, winner of this year's International Latino Book Award for current affairs, a border wall would be expensive, a near physical impossibility, and ineffective.

Much of the U.S.-Mexico border is in harsh, rugged, and remote terrain--some of the most inhospitable in the world. That's why it's favored by human smugglers. And, it's why the number of dead migrants found in these regions is increasing. I noted that in a recent blog posting.

While building a wall may be technically possible, such a project could easily take a decade or longer. Estimates put the costs of it in the tens of billions of dollars. Is this how we want to spend our hard-earned tax dollars?

Such a project will only spur more in-migration by those hoping to beat the placement of the final brick. And, once built, it will only insure that the estimated 12 million or more undocumented migrants already here will certainly stay, knowing that once out, they'll never be able to return.

The wall also does not resolve the situation of the 12 million undocumented migrants already here. Trump's remarks suggest that the U.S. should round up these 12 million people and deport them. 

Really? Such a suggestion conjures images of the German Nazis rounding up people for their death camps. Is that the way we do things in America?

Trump's calls for a wall and deportations reveal a serious disconnection from reality. The estimated 12 million undocumented workers in the U.S. provide a vast amount of labor that many Americans won't do.

They cultivate the land, pick the crops, build the houses, nail the roofs, landscape golf courses, clean the hotel rooms, cook restaurant food and wash the dishes, etc.

They provide critical labor that is the underpinning of the U.S. economy. Without their low-paid labor, much of the services and products in America would cost much more than they do.

Yet, our archaic and brutal immigration laws keep these critical workers in the shadows of the law, leaving them to be victimized and subject to extortion and intimidation. 

Their American dream is a nightmare.

A simple and easy solution is for the U.S. to restore a wide-spread guest worker visa system for those who want to work in this country. It would allow these migrant workers to earn the money they desire and return to their home country when they want.

It would allow the U.S. government to keep track of who's in the country, where they are, and what they're doing.

Instead, blowhards like Trump are calling for a horribly expensive and virtually impractical wall. It only stokes fear and hatred, more of which we don't need.

  

Border deaths on the rise again

Among the good humanitarian work done by the Tucson Samaritans is the monthly tally they keep of the total number of recovered human remains found in the desert south of Tucson, Arizona.

Alarmingly, after a slow but steady decline in recent years, the numbers are on the rise again. The numbers reveal a nine percent increase over the previous year. (121 last year, up to 133 this year.)

For the uninitiated, the recovered human remains are the skeletal remains found on in the broad swath of rugged high country desert across much of southern Arizona, just north of the Mexican border.

The remains are an excellent indication of undocumented border crossing activity. The remains, normally skeletons picked clean by the desert scavengers and harsh, dry weather, are of those unfortunate souls who lost their lives for various reasons trying to enter the U.S.

Fewer finds point to a decrease in clandestine crossings. Increased finds point to more crossings.

The increase in these grisly finds shows that U.S. Border Patrol enforcement measures seem to have little effect on the ebb and flow of migrant crossings.

The Border Patrol, of course, would argue to the contrary.

Most experts, and I agree, say the amount of migrant crossing is based on economic need and is largely unaffected by levels of enforcement. This is because of the remoteness of much of the border, which makes it virtually impossible to patrol or control.

The numbers gathered are not the random ramblings of humanitarians. These are statistics collected by and provide to the public by the Pima County Forensic Science Center. The stats represent remains found each month in Pima and Santa Cruz Counties, but also include some remains found in Pinal, Gila, and Graham counties, for various reasons. 

The increase in recovered remains comes despite a large concentration of border enforcement in southern Arizona in recent years by the Border Patrol. The concentration of man power in Arizona followed the hardening of the border in southern California and the El Paso, Texas, region, which forced migrant crossing into southern Arizona. 

With the hardening of the border in Arizona, now in-migration has moved to the more remote regions along the sprawling Texas border south of El Paso. Few accurate numbers on the found human remains are available there.

This means that the statistics provided by the Tucson Samaritans is one of the few accurate indications of border crossing activity.

The area covered by the Arizona statistics is only eight percent of the border. With 121 recovered remains in this small area, more than a thousand possible deaths occurred along the entire border. 

However, official statistics show that the 121 recovered remains are about forty percent of total. That would put the total annual deaths along the border at about 300. 

The remoteness and rugged terrain of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, which are the primary cause of the deaths (not gun violence), points to the absurdity of building the American equivalent of the Berlin Wall along the 2000-mile border.

Yet, that's what likely Republican presidential candidates like Donald Trump proposes. It staggers the mind. 

Why not, as I suggest in The Dangerous Divide, provide temporary work visas to people who want them? Those who want them know they can get the jobs they want, which most American don't won't do. 

And, it would allow the U.S. to keep track of who's in the country, where they are, and what they're doing. It would also allow the visa holders to return to Mexico without fear they could never come back.

But of course, that's too simple and easy.