Please pardon my use of an ’80s catchphrase from Madison Avenue but I’m struggling to understand why so many Yanks, non-Yanks and (allegedly) Mexicans object to the promised Trump wall. I suspect the Mexican gubmint’s objection is based on Trump’s high-handed assumption that the border is his to control rather than shared; and his demand that Mexico must pay for it.
There can be no comparison with the Berlin wall, which divided a single country. There is no comparison with Shengen, based on agreed principles of trade and movement. The USA needs to deal with illegal immigration and the drug trade. How else but by erecting a physical barrier capable of being defended?
Suggestions, please, on plastic fivers……
Boadicea's Chariot 
Some recently irrelevant young lobbyist from the former administration, abandoned confused and nervous inside the Beltway, was still referring the other day not to ‘illegal immigrants’ but to ‘non-documented migrants’.
Ahem, Maginot Line, anybody? Built in the thirties to protect France from those nasty Germans and Swiss. Hugely fortified it was, impervious to tanks and bombs and almost any other known form of attack and provided no doubt with plenty of underground restaurants and brothels. So the Germans simply went around the side and invaded via the Low Countries all the way to Dunkirk and on to Paris for the duration of the contretemps.
In this latest case, it is obvious that the Mexican drug smugglers will adapt their already considerable knowledge of tunnels under the border fence to burrow under the wall. Never mind 40 feet high – it needs to be 40 feet deep too. Stands to reason, dunnit!
OZ
OK, send in the Welsh miners. (Flattering comment for CO!)
Janus! Forget the plastic fivers! We’ve had plastic money for yonks and saves us a fortune in reprinting – you can even keep it clean by putting it in the washing machine…
Here’s my take on the rest of your post.
I see no problem with any country erecting a barrier against anyone trying to bypass that country’s laws on immigration. In my, probably Genghis Khan view, anyone who breaks the law of the country in which they want to live should never have the right to live in that country. Those who break the immigration laws have shown contempt for the laws of that country – so why would anyone believe that they would not continue to do so?
For those people who have gone through due legal process to get legal residency in a country, and as far as Oz is concerned “it ain’t easy”, it’s a downright insult for the country they have struggled to live in to accept, without the sort of verification that they had to go through, people who just rock up and demand to be let in. Talk to a few genuine refugees who waited their turn in refugee camps, I doubt they are too happy either. Well the two that I know aren’t.
If I can believe newspaper reports, it would seem that Mexico wants to build a wall between itself and the rest of South America to keep out those people trying to get access to the US. Nothing wrong with that – but don’t knock the US for doing the same.
However, I’m not sure that the US should try to get Mexico to pay for the wall – it is, after all, the US that wants to keep these people out.
Boadicea – Trump says the wall will be financed by a 20% border tax on goods coming from Mexico. One wonders whether this will be paid by Mexican exporters prior to or at the point of entry, or simply loaded onto the retail price to be paid by the American taxpayers for said goods once imported.
I quite agree too about legal immigrants being less than pleased by the queue of non-documented migrants, so to speak, demanding their yooman rites (house, car, medical care, a shed load of various cash benefits and Sharia law) the moment they are scraped off the axles of the Eurostar or released from a reefer box on the back of a foreign lorry somewhere in Kent.
OZ
Boa, I have nothing against fivers of any kind!
Trump must surely raise the surcharge at the border, OZ.
I cannot see how you could possibly make any one else pay for something you voluntarily build on your land, total rubbish like most of Trump’s utterances.
Build it by all means but it will not be effective until there are punitive measures intimidating employers from hiring them without the correct papers. That is automatic prison and large fines.
There appear to be an awful lot of help here for illegals, they seem to be able to get a lot of handouts that are not available to white indigenous Americans. Plus well meaning organisations, do gooders and churches who aid and abet illegals. Schools are not allowed to ask the status of their pupils here in WA! Child medical programmes ditto.
So there are a lot of citizenry here who have systematically undermined the laws of this country for years!
Until this is addressed by hiring more border force and enforcing the laws that are already on the statute book, Trump is pissing in the wind.
I quite understand Bo’s attitude here, likewise in the USA, to maintain the paperwork of legality is both time consuming and very costly and there are no free handouts!
The only answer is to round them up, sift them out and deport. Then you run into the thorny question of automatic citizenship of any born here, how can you deport the parents and leave a child? Can’t be done with any degree of civility. The ones I feel sorry for are the young adults who were bought here as children illegally, who have lived here all their lives and do not know their country or origin. They did nothing illegal, it was done to them by their parents, should they have to pay?
The wall is a simplistic talismanic piece of claptrap to appeal to Trump’s uneducated support. It will solve few of the problems of illegal immigration.
And think what 20% will do to the price of avocados!!!
CO, we need to talk about your possible avocado obsession.
I’m beginning to worry that you may have some sort of dependency issue and might need intervention.
Luckily for CO, avocados are probably (c. Carlsberg) more healthy than beef. 🙂