As it turns out, completing a border wall between Mexico and the United States wasn’t just a campaign promise by Donald Trump. Now that he is the 45th President of the United States, he has wasted no time in getting down to business. And that has more than a few on the left in an absolute panic.
Of course, fences can turn into walls, and these two mechanisms are being used widely across the world today for border protection – as in “this land is your land, this land is my land.” Perhaps the most famous wall of all, the Berlin Wall, was torn down on November 9, 1989 – twenty-seven years plus one day before Donald Trump was elected President of the United States.
In 1989 there existed sixteen border fences. Today there are sixty-five such structures “either completed or under construction, according to Quebec University expert Elisabeth Vallet.” So the question naturally arises, what is the efficacy of such structures.
In other words, do walls work?
If you read the American establishment media, one would quickly come to the conclusion that these sixty-five countries are wasting an enormous amount of time and money. To wit, Politico’s article written by Michael Dear, emeritus professor in the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley:
But what Trump doesn’t understand—ironic, for someone so preoccupied with “winning”—is that building walls between nations is an utter failure of the geopolitical imagination. Walls are a blunt instrument of diplomacy. At best, they offer temporary respite from deeper tensions which usually remain unresolved by separation. At worst, walls can exacerbate the problems they were intended to solve. Put simply, walls do not work as permanent solutions to tough problems. Which is why, ultimately, they fall.
As usual, the left is missing the point. The President doesn’t even remotely suggest that the Mexican-American border wall is an instrument of diplomacy – it is meant as a barrier to keep illegal people out. Period. He’s not talking about tensions and unresolved separations; he’s talking about simply enforcing long-existing laws.
So in that regard — in terms of keeping people out – the intended purpose of the wall – one naturally wonders if there is any data to back this supposition. And lo’ and behold one does not have to search far and wide for the answer to that question.
As a matter of fact, border walls and fences do, indeed, work.
From The Daily Caller:
Several European countries have erected fences to keep migrants out, and, according to the numbers, every case appears to have a large impact.
Hungary was a popular pathway for refugees on their way to Germany during the fall. When the daily illegal border crossings were at 7,000 per day, Prime Minister Viktor Orban decided to erect a fence along the border to Serbia and Croatia.
The result speaks for itself:
What about Israel? Well, here are the facts, according to Jewish Virtual Library:
During the 34 months from the beginning of the violence in September 2000 until the construction of the first continuous segment of the security fence at the end of July 2003, Samaria-based terrorists carried out 73 attacks in which 293 Israelis were killed and 1950 wounded. In the 11 months between the erection of the first segment at the beginning of August 2003 and the end of June 2004, only three attacks were successful, and all three occurred in the first half of 2003.
Since construction of the fence began, the number of attacks has declined by more than 90%. The number of Israelis murdered and wounded has decreased by more than 70% and 85%, respectively, after erection of the fence.
The security fence in Israel hasn’t only lowered violence; it’s saved lives:
The value of the fence in saving lives is evident from the data: In 2002, the year before construction started, 457 Israelis were murdered; in 2009, 8 Israelis were killed.
The problem with the left is that they never let inconvenient truths get in their way. They are welcome to continue to blather all they want about the uselessness of walls, but thinking Americans must realize that’s all it is – blather, mumbo-jumbo, meaningless babble. And it seems unlikely they’ll stop all the prattle before, during and after the wall is built.
But build it he will. And we will all be the safer for it – ask any of the Angel Moms who suffered the loss of a family member at the hands of an illegal alien.
Twentieth-century American poet Robert Frost once wrote a complex poem called Mending Wall that reveals the tensions and proximity of two neighbors. Whether it was Frost’s intention or not, a phrase from his poem has become a modern day proverb for the efficacy of fences. It is an adage that seems quite fitting of the facts and figures that bear witness to the value of border walls:
Good fences make good neighbors.
