Building The Wall Won't Stop Illegal Immigration

It amuses me to no end how Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives are taking aim at President Trump for his apparent retreat on federal funding for The Wall along the Mexican border. This backlash is such that Trump is now hinting that he will force a government shutdown by vetoing the short term spending bill if it does not include funding for The Wall.


In this vein, it also amuses how a GoFundMe page started by Brian Kolfage, a triple amputee veteran, has raised nearly $5 million in three days for the purpose of funding The Wall with the goal of raising $1 billion. It would not surprise me if Kolfage attains his goal by the end of the year.


I say the build the wall all you want. It won't stop illegal immigration. Oh, it will reduce it marginally. But it won't solve the problem. A majority of illegal immigrants actually enter this country legally and overstay their visas. According to stats released by DHS in August, nearly twice as many people (702,000) overstayed their visas than illegally crossed the southern border (361,000) in 2017.


The fact that conservatives focus their attention on The Wall rather than addressing those who overstay their visas is indicative of several things. First, it indicates that conservatives prefer easy answers. Building a wall is much more straightforward proposition than the logistics involved in tracking people who entered the country legally. Second, it gives the appearance of doing something and for conservatives appearance is everything. Which brings me to my third point. By promoting The Wall conservatives set their sights on a very specific population - Mexicans and Latin Americans who have a different skin color and speak a different language. There's a ready made enemy. It's far easier to scare the population that way than by targeting college girls from Sweden who were supposed to leave the country six months ago.


Building The Wall won't stop illegal immigration anymore than banning Muslim entry into the United States will stop acts of radical Islamic terrorism or gun control will reduce mass shootings. Easy answers are invariably the wrong answers.