Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Walls
for release 12-26-05
Washington D.C.


The concept of national borders is an absurdity in today's world. With the click of a mouse I can conduct business in Russia or Canada or Singapore or Mexico. I can order goods or have products delivered practically anywhere in the world without ever leaving this chair. I can transfer currency or securities or ideas half-way around the globe in a blink.

So national borders are as quaint and dated as the pony express and cargo ships with sails and armies that march in ranks with red suits and bayonettes led by bagpipers. Physical borders are a relic of the seventeenth century.

As I write I am looking out the window into the back yard. There is a fence around it. That's a border, I suppose. Next door there is a Latin American family. They are wonderful, warm, hardworking people from El Salvador. The improvements they have made to their property have increased the value of ours. They are good neighbors.

Their kids shoot hoops on the new driveway that they built. Occasionally a ball will come over the fence into our back yard. At first the kids would come and ring our doorbell and ask if they could retrieve their ball. After about the third time I told them, "feel free to go get your ball anytime, you don't need to ask my permission, mi casa es su casa, etc." They mowed my lawn one day without me even asking.

Yes, we live in a new world, but it's not because of 9/11, it's because of modern transportation and communication and technology. Borders are obsolete. Wherever you build a wall, a tunnel will soon follow. Look at Berlin.

The subject of illegal immigration promises to emerge as the dominant issue in the coming year. I'm sure that political blood will be spilled in the impending battle. Already our Congress is talking about the nonsensical idea of putting up a wall between the US and Mexico. Oh, fine. This conjures up pictures of Vicente Fox standing in Nuevo Laredo making a speech before the world's news cameras and saying, "Mr. Bush, tear down this wall."

There are several viewpoints on the subject of illegal immigration. There is the Repub/capitalist slant. Employers love the nearly unlimited cheap labor. Illegals are dream employees. Not only will they work for slave wages but by virtue of their illegality they are reluctant to organize or demand benefits.

The Dem/populist point of view: Illegal immigrants are a drain on our social services and steal our jobs. This is a viewpoint that is common among wage earners who are low on the economic totem pole, because they are competing for the same jobs and the same social services.

The xenophobic point of view: They don't speak our language, they broke the law to get here in the first place and they want to marry our daughters.

There are several solutions. There is the razor wire solution, where we construct and maintain an expensive barrier on our land borders, effectively making America a prison. This is a stupid and pointless solution. It's no surprise that the monkeys in Congress are considering it. We can't even build unbreachable levees to protect a few square miles in New Orleans from a little water with a girl's name and we are thinking about building a 4000 mile wall that is supposed to keep construction workers and domestic laborers, who are useful to the economy, out of our country (and oh yeah, terrorists). I'm sure that Halliburton has a plan on the drawing boards already. It would be a juicy contract.

When the Chinese built the Great Wall it was for the purpose of keeping out the invading Manchus. I think we should hire Donald Trump to build The Greater Wall on our southern border. I mean a magnificent wall to dwarf the one in China with neon lights running through the razor wire, one that the astronauts could see from outer space, the eight wonder of the world. We could import Mexican workers to help build it and it could one day be a tourist attraction. (Footnote: The Great Wall of China took generations to build at great expense in life and treasure and in the end the Manchus ruled China. See how well that worked?}

We currently have slightly more than 34 million immigrants living in the US. That's the highest number in American history. And a million more come each year, more than half of them are illegals. That's twelve percent of our population.

The Poet's Eye sees a better solution: Make Mexico the 51st state. Better still, let's forget the whole idea of borders.

“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.”
---Robert Frost

So true about the wall... dig under it as they do dig under the Rio Grande... tunneling is not new and is difficult to control... and yes, it would require many, many Mexican laborers to build the wall. Ridiculous...

But what is more ridiculous... Vicente Fox not allowing the poor legal passes into the U.S., via visas... which would legalize their passage and surely satisfy the U.S.... afterall how many thousands of dollars are these poor paying the coyotes (anywhere between $1,000. and in some cases up to 5-6.000 each!) to move them throughout the U.S.... money the Mexican gov't could surely use.

Another annoying problem with the immigrants is that they send the bulk of their money to their home country which drains the U.S. economy of some 6-8 billion dollars yearly. Understandable why the immigrants would send their families money but this practice (necessity) does not aid in the economic security of the U.S.. (Of course neither does shipping any jobs outside the country.. but that is another complaint).

The issue is two-fold, as is any issue... but in order to maintain the peace it is necessary to comprehend the reasons the Mexican govt does nada towards the border problems... it's a very touchy situation that nobody really wants to address, but will have to be addressed in order to fully understand the situation.

Current estimates of the native (indigenous) population of Mexico is around 80%, but the government (the power elite) is comprised of people within the remaining 20% - the Spanish (and some French) colonizers. These power elite would prefer to see the native population go North... fewer to deal with and their poverty, and a real plus: they send U.S. dollars back which filter into the government coffers. The power elite is in effect using the natives for their own benefit, that of wealth in the hands of the few... a struggle that is not new and will remain until there is a social uprising as we have seen in Venezuela and Bolivia, where there is a cry for more social justice and equality for all citizens and not just the power elite.

The Mexican that has Spanish colonial blood has little problem in making legal crossings across the borders... they have the money, and therefore the legal means of doing so, and pose no threat to the economy of the U.S. unlike the illegals that come from poverty that is ignored by the power elite.

[enough]

"And to whom I was like to give offence."
I've always loved that line. Frost being a little punny.

Good write, LR.

I wish I could live to see a world without boundaries. Maybe my grandchildren will. One can only hope.

The comparison of such a border wall to the Berlin wall is perhaps a bit of a stretch... the Berlin Wall was both a figurative and literal prison wall, the idea was to keep people in, not out.

But your point is well-taken. Walls are ultimately futile, or pointless. Yet somehow they remain politically sexy....

And.... "Make Mexico the 51st state"?.... hmmm....presumably without 'Shock and Awe' this time, right? How would the Mexicans feel about this?

Interesting insights, Cecil. What a mess...

Walls have ying and yang approach to them. Sometimes they're good and sometimes they're bad.
_________________
Honda Ridgeline

I walk along a wall
a parapet with no regrets............

proposed wall

From the sketch, it appears that this is a two-way barrier, designed to stop traffic approaching from both the Mexican and U.S. sides with equal measure of determination. Why is that, I wonder?

I'm reminded of stories about Israel's wall from a couple years ago, the wall built to keep out Palestinian terrorists. It caused a minor worldwide stink and was hotly debated on L-kicks. Whatever became of that wall? Was it ever finished? I may have to do a followup on it.

Yeah. Walls. They're becoming ever more tiresome, aren't they?

yeah, walls are tiresome
give me three army blankets and five minutes and I would be over that fence.

No matter how many walls go up. They'll eventually come down in the end.
_________________
Mercedes Fintail

DtD -

No matter how many walls go up. They'll eventually come down in the end.

The big question would be who'll come down first - the wall or you..?

The answer would the wall and it's creator!!!!
_________________
BMW 5 Series

What the hell they may as well lay down some land mines while they are at it.

I happened across C-span the day they were discussing building this wall, and apparently the bill calls for a wall along the Canadian border as well.

And I would just like to point out, The Great Wall of China...
Yeah, I walked on it.

we won't let impoverished mexicans come to our country to make a buck but it's ok for our multigazilliondollar conglomerates to fuck free trade in the ass while subjecting other nations to crass commercialism and paying slave wages overseas for shit products to sell to americans they lay off.

even the wall we make will be built of shit and will fall down.

after 9/11 they tried to install cameras on the borders but theyve spent billions of dollars so far and none of them work.

somewhere, Buddha is pointing his finger at God and laughing his ass off.