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President Trump Donald John Trump Schultz won't say if he will sell all Starbucks shares if he becomes president Sarah Sanders cites El Chapo in push for border security Pence rips Omar's 'inadequate' apology for tweets criticized as anti-Semitic MORE 's proposed border wall will help federal agencies secure the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Carla Provost, the newly announced chief of U.S. border patrol.

"Most certainly, it already assists my men and women," Provost told Hill.TV's Buck Sexton on Wednesday.

"We already have many miles, over 600 miles of barrier along the border. I have been in locations where there was no barrier, and then I was there when we put it up. It certainly helps. It's not a be all end all. It's a part of a system. We need the technology, we need that infrastructure," she added in the interview that aired Thursday.

The Trump administration announced on Thursday that Provost would lead the agency, making her the first woman to ever hold the position.

The president has come under fire in recent months after reports surfaced that his zero tolerance immigration policy led to the separation of more than 2,500 migrant children from their parents at the U.S. border.

Trump first vowed to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico during the start of his presidential campaign in 2015. In recent weeks, he has threatened to shut down the government over funding for the wall, slamming the Senate's proposal to provide $1.6 billion for the project.

He is reportedly expected to push for the full $25 billion to fund the structure.

However, the Government Accountability Office revealed on Monday that the administration has not conducted a full analysis of the costs for the wall.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has tested eight prototypes for border barriers, and has assessed each design for security and costs.

"We need the agents to be able to respond when there is traffic to the area, and we need access and mobility. A lot of the areas along the border are very difficult for us to access," Provost said.

"It's that combination of those four things, impedance and denial, technology, access and mobility, and then the men and women," she said. "That's that kind of, I guess that magic combination that we have found over the 23 years I have been in. It's a different combination everywhere that we go. There's no one size fits all, but we definitely need all of those things."

- Julia Manchester

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Border patrol chief: Wall will 'most certainly' help secure southern border

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President Trump Donald John Trump Schultz won't say if he will sell all Starbucks shares if he becomes president Sarah Sanders cites El Chapo in push for border security Pence rips Omar's 'inadequate' apology for tweets criticized as anti-Semitic MORE 's proposed border wall will help federal agencies secure the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Carla Provost, the newly announced chief of U.S.

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Is building a wall on our border a morally good action? As a professor who has taught biblical ethics for 41 years, I think it is - in fact, the Bible itself repeatedly views protective walls with favor.

Walls gave peace and security. In the world of the Old Testament, people built walls around cities to protect themselves from thieves, murderers, and other criminals, and from foreign invaders who would seek to destroy the city. People could still enter the city, but they had to do so by the gate, so that city officials would have some control over who was coming in and going out. Today's debate is about a larger area - a national border, not a city - but the principles are the same.

A strong wall gave peace and security to the city, and one prayer of blessing for a city was, " Peace be within your walls and security within your towers!" (Psalm 122:7). There was also a spiritual component, for the Lord himself strengthened the gates in the walls so they would protect the children and the peace and prosperity of a city:

Praise the LORD, O Jerusalem! Praise your God, O Zion! For he strengthens the bars of your gates; he blesses your children within you. He makes peace in your borders; he fills you with the finest of the wheat (Psalm 147:12-14).

After King David established his capital in Jerusalem, he prayed, "Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; build up the walls of Jerusalem" (Psalm 51:18) - God's blessing would include strong walls! After David came King Solomon, who finished and strengthened the wall around Jerusalem (1 Kings 3:1).

But the people of Israel strayed from God, and he brought judgment in the form of Babylonian invaders who broke down and destroyed the city wall: "And they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem and burned all its palaces with fire and destroyed all its precious vessels" (2 Chronicles 36:19; cf. Jeremiah 52:14). God's judgment removed the walls! As long as the wall around Jerusalem was broken down, it was a mark of shame and derision: "The remnant . . . who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire" (Nehemiah 1:3).

The pathetic shame of a city without walls is also evident in this proverb: "A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls " (Proverbs 25:28). The implication is that such a man and such a city are both headed for destruction.

After 70 years of exile in Babylon, the Jewish people were able to return and to rebuild Jerusalem's wall. Nehemiah asked the Persian king Artaxerxes to give him the timber needed to build the wall and its gates: "And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me " (Nehemiah 2:8). In this case, God's blessing was evident when the leader of the government authorized the allocation of materials to build the wall.

Then Nehemiah needed laborers for the massive task of rebuilding the wall. He challenged the people, "Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision" (Nehemiah 2:17). Fortunately, "the people had a mind to work" (Nehemiah 4:6), and an entire chapter of Nehemiah is devoted to recording the names of people who rebuilt the wall, specifying the section that each person repaired (Nehemiah 3). Such a record - having their names forever in the pages of the Hebrew Bible - was a significant honor for those who repaired the wall. It was a morally commendable act.

There was a great celebration when the wall was completed: "And at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem they sought the Levites . . . to celebrate the dedication with gladness, with thanksgivings and was singing, with cymbals, harps, and lyres . . . . Then I . . . appointed two great choirs that gave thanks" (Nehemiah 12:27, 31).

There is another wall in the Bible - at the very end of the New Testament. The apostle John has a vision of the New Jerusalem, a great city that comes down from heaven, and it includes a wall: "It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels" (Revelation 21:12). Whether this is literal or simply part of a symbolic prophetic vision (I don't know), it is clear that the wall protects the peace and security of those who are within.

My conclusion from this overview is that the Bible views border walls as a morally good thing, something for which to thank God. Walls on a border are a major deterrent to evil and they provide clear visible evidence that a city or nation has control over who enters it, something absolutely essential if a government is going to prevent a nation from devolving into more and more anarchy.

Objection: "We should be a nation that welcomes immigrants." I agree wholeheartedly - if they come legally. But it is no kindness to them if the lack of a wall tempts them to risk death by walking across miles of parched desert, at the mercy of violent gangs, and then come into the US without legal documentation, only to live here as a permanent legal underclass, easily exploited, living in constant fear of discovery. In addition, it diminishes respect for the law and destabilizes the nation when millions of people exist in the shadows, living outside the legal recordkeeping functions of the nation.

And there has to be some limit on the number we admit each year. I would like the number to be higher than it is, but a complete "open borders" policy would overwhelm the country. The US population today is 328 million. The population of the world is 7.6 billion, or 23 times the US population. If we allowed in everyone who wanted to enter, as many as half the world's population might want to come - giving us over 10 times our current population. Even if only 10% of the world (a very low estimate) came in through open borders, the US would suddenly confront the impossible task of trying to assimilate 760 million new immigrants into a nation of 328 million. "Open borders" is not a realistic solution or one that could ever get enough popular support to pass Congress and become law. Building a wall with well-regulated gates declares that while we welcome immigrants, we - not they - are going to decide which ones, and how many.

The US currently admits over 1,000,000 immigrants per year who come legally and stay permanently - far more than any other nation. If you think that number should be even higher (as I do), then suggest a higher number to your congressman and talk to your fellow citizens. Persuade people to agree with you, and work for a change in the law. But don't oppose a border wall, for that is just promoting more lawlessness.

Objection: "The Bible tells us to care for the sojourner." I agree - but we still must have some means of regulating how many "sojourners" we allow into the country and who can qualify to enter - and a wall is the most effective way to do this. When the Bible says, "Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 10:19), Old Testament professor James Hoffmeier has demonstrated that these "sojourners" (or "resident foreigners" in one translation; the Hebrew term is ger) were people who had entered another country legally, with the permission and knowledge of the country that admitted them. (The unmodified term "foreigner" in some translations is not specific enough to translate Hebrew ger.) A foreigner who had entered a country by stealth and did not have recognized standing as a resident alien was not considered a "sojourner" (Hebrew ger) but simply a "foreigner" (Hebrew nekar or zar).

Objection: "These are good people who are just seeking a better life." Yes, many of them are, and we should welcome them - if they come legally. But we can't ignore the fact that many others will not become "good neighbors" - some are drug runners, gang members, and even terrorists. A wall makes it possible to screen out the people who have previously been deported for felonies and others who are most likely to commit crimes or simply become a drain on the economy rather than getting a productive job.

An effective border wall would also be the best way to keep children together with their parents. Under the present system, families (1) enter the US illegally and (2) are caught, then (3) they plead for asylum, and (4) they are incarcerated until their asylum petition can be evaluated. But if we had a completed wall, such requests for asylum would be decided at the border, before they ever entered the US. We would never have to detain either parents or children on US soil in the first place.

Objection: "Walls don't work." That objection is not true. Sections of high, effective walls and fences have already transformed whole regions of San Diego and El Paso from high-crime zones into peaceful, much safer cities.

A high, double wall with modern electronic equipment to detect tunneling would stop perhaps 90-95 percent or even more of illegal border crossings. Once such a wall is complete, most Americans would feel that the border is finally under control, and the remaining questions about immigration could be resolved in an atmosphere of far less tension and animosity.

Walls that already work: In fact, we already have a highly effective system of "border walls" that nobody argues about - in our airports. Every time I return to the US from a foreign country, I have to go through customs at the airport, and so does everybody else. The room where people wait in line to see a customs officer has walls to make sure that all arriving passengers have to go through passport control. I've never seen anyone protesting the existence of walls in the customs area or demanding that a section of the wall be removed so that people who don't want to go through passport control can simply walk into the country whenever they want. That would be an open invitation to terrorists and other criminals, and it would make it impossible for the US to place any limits at all on the number of people who came into the country and stayed without legal documentation.

Yet demanding "no passport controls at airports" is, it seems to me, exactly parallel to saying that we should not build a wall on our southern border. Why should airports be any different from other border entry points? Yes, we are a nation of immigrants, and we should eagerly welcome numerous immigrants into the US every year, but they must come in legally, through the gates in the wall, not illegally and dangerously across an open desert.

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Why Building a Border Wall Is a Morally Good Action

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Is building a wall on our border a morally good action? As a professor who has taught biblical ethics for 41 years, I think it is - in fact, the Bible itself repeatedly views protective walls with favor. Walls gave peace and security.

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We live a world of borders and walls. In addition to the massive and expensive barrier on long stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border, in the 23 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, 26 other new walls and fences have gone up on political borders around the world. These walls are built by both totalitarian regimes and democracies, including India, Thailand, Israel, South Africa, and the European Union. Invariably, the barriers are justified in the language of security-the country must be protected from the terrorists, drug cartels, insurgents, or suicide bombers lurking on the other side.

Despite the external focus of these justifications, in most instances these walls and fences are actually the result of the internal politics of the state that builds them. There are three specific reasons for constructing a border wall: establishing sovereignty over ungoverned or unruly lands; protecting the wealth of the state and population; and protecting cultural practices within the state from the possible influence of other value systems possessed by immigrants. The decision to build the 664-mile barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border, although often presented as primarily in response to drug-related violence and terrorism, is largely due to these internal factors.

The desire to establish clear sovereign authority over the state's territory is the first factor that underlies the construction of a border barrier. Although we often imagine the territorial outline of countries as sharply drawn lines where the control of one state ends and another begins, most borders on the ground belie this simplicity. The idea that borders (or rivers or coastlines) are lines is a convenience of cartography that is established on the ground many years after a map is drawn, if at all. The oldest political borders in Europe, for example, are only a few hundred years old, and most were established more recently than that. Before the 1600s, most states did not recognize each other's sovereign authority over a territory, and the technological advances in cartography that allowed fixed borders and territories to be represented had not been achieved. Consequently, even the simple idea that states have clearly defined territories that are marked by a linear border is a very recent development.

The contemporary U.S.-Mexico border was established on maps at the end of the U.S.-Mexican War by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. ¹ The war settled which territories the expansion-minded United States could claim and transferred almost half of Mexico's territory to the United- States. The last sections of the border were finalized with the Gadsden Purchase in 1854, which secured mining rights and a better route for a railroad connection to California. At the time, the territory was part of the United States in name only and, despite the enormous land area, was populated by about 100,000 Mexicans and 200,000 Native Americans. ² Over the intervening years, sovereign authority over these lands was established by moving Anglo populations onto the land and by violently suppressing any resistance. Land surveying, creating property maps, and the deployment of police forces resignified the landscape. Yet the line existed on the map and in the population's geographic imagination only inchoately, as the practices and performances of sovereignty slowly inscribed the different territories onto the landscape.

This process accelerated in the 1990s as funding for border security increased substantially and the idea of marking the imagined line with a physical barrier took hold. When the Border Patrol was established in 1924, it was tiny and remained underfunded for decades. In 1992, there were 3,555 agents at the U.S.-Mexico border, but by 2010 there were over 20,100. ³ These changes have both practical and symbolic effects on the hardening of the border. The additional agents play a practical enforcement role while the fence project, which passed Congress in 2006, is much more symbolically significant. Walls and fences are the most efficient way to mark territorial differences on the ground because they take the abstract idea of a territory and materialize it. The construction of the barrier is another step in the process of reimaging these formerly Native American and Mexican lands as firmly part of the territory of the United States. By physically inscribing the line in the landscape, the wall brings the border into being and visually demonstrates where U.S. territory ends and Mexican territory begins.

The second internal factor that results in the construction of a wall or fence on a border is the presence of a poorer country on the other side. In previous eras, political borders served primarily as either military defensive lines where one army prevented the movement of another or as markers of different government regimes where one set of laws and taxes or one cultural system stopped and another began. Over the 20th century, the practice of absolute sovereignty over a bounded territory produced substantial wealth inequalities globally, which increased the desire of many people to move either to avoid deteriorating conditions in their home state or to seek better economic opportunities elsewhere. ⁴ These movements, along with the possibility of hostile people or items passing into the state, resulted in a much more substantial focus on borders as a location to prevent the unauthorized movement of people.

Just as we often imagine most borders as the sharp lines depicted on maps, we also imagine that historically most borders were fenced and fortified, but this is not the case. The older purposes of borders as defensive military lines or administrative divisions do not necessitate a wall or fence. Fences do not deter tanks and airplanes, and administrative divisions between peaceful neighbors do not require an expensive barrier. The changing purpose for borders is evident in the sheer number of new barriers built in the past 20 years. Twenty-seven have been built since 1998, compared with 11 during the entire Cold War period from 1945 until 1990. Furthermore, several of those Cold War barriers were quite short including the U.S. fence with Cuba at Guantánamo Bay and the fence between Gibraltar and Spain.

Not only are the new barriers longer than in the past, but many are built along peaceful borders. The significant characteristic that most of these borders share is that they mark a sharp wealth discontinuity. ⁵ For example, the average annual per capita GDP (in 2010 U.S. dollars) of the countries that have built barriers since the fall of the Berlin Wall is $14,067; the average for the countries on the other side of these barriers is $2,801. The U.S. barrier on the Mexican border fits this pattern. Although the Canadian border is longer and certainly more porous (the Border Patrol estimated in 2009 that it had effective control over less than 1% of the Canadian border versus 35% of the Mexican border), the debates about fencing the border focused only on Mexico. ⁶ The United States' per capita GDP in 2010 was $47,000, Canada's was $39,000, and Mexico's was $14,000.

The final internal factor that plays a role in the decision to build a fence or wall on a political border is the fear that population movements will irreversibly change the way of life inside the state. In the United States, concerns about the threat that immigrant values pose are as old as the country itself. At different points in history, the Irish, the Chinese, and the Italians were all described as posing a grave threat to a particular version of what it meant to be an "American." Today, these debates revolve around both Muslims and Latino immigrants who, anti-immigrant activists argue, bring alternative social codes and do not assimilate into the mainstream of U.S. society. The fence on the border symbolizes the hardened and fixed borderline that marks a clear distinction between the territories where particular people belong.

The construction of a barrier on the border simultaneously legitimates and intensifies the internal exclusionary practices of the sovereign state. It legitimates exclusion by providing a material manifestation of the abstract idea of sovereignty, which brings the claim of territorial difference into being. The barrier also intensifies these exclusionary practices, because once the boundary is marked and "the container" of the state takes form, the perception of the difference between the two places becomes stronger. This process is evident in new restrictive immigration laws at the state level in Alabama and Arizona as well as in the protests and vandalism directed toward proposed Islamic cultural centers in New York and Tennessee. By demonstrating sovereign control, the state simultaneously reifies authority over that territory and defines the limits of the people that belong there. These perceived differences then fuel more passionate feelings of belonging to the in-group and distinction from the other on the outside.

The U.S. fence on the Mexican border should be understood both in terms of the enhanced enforcement capabilities of the government and in the assertion of where the state has authority and who should be allowed in the state's territory. The United States built the barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border to define its sovereign authority over its territory, to protect the economic privileges of its population, and to protect a particular way of life from other people who are perceived to have different value systems. Rather than a barrier against terrorism and cartel violence, it is a performance of the United States' territory and boundaries.

Reece Jones is Associate Professor and Chair of Graduate Studies in the Department of Geography at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Parts of this article are excerpted from his new book, Border Walls: Security and the War on Terror in the United States, India, and Israel (Zed Books, 2012).

1. Joseph Werne, The Imaginary Line: A History of the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, 1848-57 (Texas Christian University Press, 2007).

2. Joseph Nevins, Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond: The War on "Illegals" and the Remaking of the US-Mexico Boundary (Routledge, 2010), 26-8; Kelly Lytle Hernández, Migra! A History of the US Border Patrol (University of California Press, 2010), 21-2.

3. Chad C. Haddal, Border Security: The Role of the Border Patrol (Washington DC: Congressional Research Services, 2010), 13.

4. John Agnew, Globalization and Sovereignty (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 1-45; Richard E. Baldwin, Phillip Martin, and Gianmarco Ottaviano, "Global Income Divergence, Trade, and Industrialization: The Geography of Growth Take-Offs." Journal of Economic Growth 6, no. 1 (2001): 5-37.

5. Stéphane Rosière and Reece Jones, "Teichopolitics: Reconsidering Globalization Through the Role of Walls and Fences," Geopolitics 17, no. 1 (2012): 217-34.

6. Todd Owen, Congressional Testimony, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (July 9, 2009), 3.
Read the rest of NACLA's Fall 2012 issue: "#Radical Media: Communication Unbound."

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We live a world of borders and walls. In addition to the massive and expensive barrier on long stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border, in the 23 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, 26 other new walls and fences have gone up on political borders around the world.

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's recently released proposal for immigration reform is simple: build a wall along the length of the U.S.-Mexico border, and make Mexico pay for it. Setting aside the issue of how the United States might make Mexico pay for a blatant monument to anti-Mexican sentiment, the idea is flat-out moronic, to use one of The Donald's favorite adjectives, like asking the Mongolians to pay for the Great Wall of China.

In the first place, it's not as if the border is undefended. The United States spends $3.7 billion per year to keep around 21,000 Border Patrol agents in the field, and another $3.2 billion on 23,000 inspectors at ports of entry along the border, a third of which has already been walled or fenced off. It is perhaps the most patrolled and highly defended border anywhere in the world, at least for two closely connected countries at peace with one another. Judging from the border, you'd never know Mexico was a friendly nation linked to the United States by a treaty agreement worth over half a trillion dollars in annual trade.

But a plan for more walls to further enhance border enforcement is moronic not only because it is expensive. Abundant evidence also shows that money spent on border enforcement is worse than useless - it's counterproductive. For most of the 20th century, migration from Mexico was heavily circular, with male migrants moving back and forth across the border to earn money in the United States and then returning to Mexico to spend and invest at home. From 1965 to 1985, estimates indicate that 86 percent of undocumented entries were offset by departures, and the undocumented population grew slowly, rising to just under 3 million over two decades.

In 1986, however, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which kicked off a decades-long process of border militarization. It was passed during the Cold War, when President Ronald Reagan warned Americans that "terrorists and subversives" south of the border were "just two days' driving time from Harlingen, Texas" and when his task force on terrorism stated that communist agents were ready to "feed on the anger and frustration of recent Central and South American immigrants who will not realize their own version of the American dream."

Enforcement was further buttressed by the launching of Operation Blockade in El Paso, Texas, in 1993 and Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego, California, in 1994. These operations, led by the U.S. Border Patrol, erected a literal wall of enforcement resources at the two busiest U.S.-Mexico border crossings. They also diverted migratory flows away from these regions, through the Sonoran Desert, and into Arizona. This diversion greatly increased the costs and risks of undocumented border crossing: Since 1986, more than 7,000 migrants have died along the border, and the average cost of crossing has risen from $600 to $4,500, according to estimates from the Mexican Migration Project, which I co-direct.

Although the intent of border enforcement was to discourage migrants from coming to the United States, in practice it backfired, instead discouraging them from returning home to Mexico. Having experienced the risks and having paid the costs of gaining entry, undocumented men increasingly hunkered down and stayed in the United States, rather than circulating back to face the gantlet once more. As a result, the rate of return migration began to fall after 1986 and accelerated with the launching of the border operations in 1993 and 1994.

Because net migration equals the difference between those entering and leaving the United States, the falling rate of return produced a huge increase in the net volume of undocumented migration. Through the 1990s and early 2000s, in other words, the United States spent billions of dollars, only to double the rate of undocumented population growth. Not only that, but Operation Gatekeeper's diversion of migrants away from California and into Arizona prompted them to continue onward to new destinations throughout the United States. Census data indicate that two-thirds of Mexican migrants who arrived between 1985 and 1990 went to California; by the 1995-to-2000 time period, that share had fallen to just one third, where it has since remained. Led by Mexicans, but also by Central Americans, the fastest-growing Latino populations are now in places like Georgia, North Carolina, and Iowa - not California.

In addition, as male migrants spent more time north of the border, they were increasingly joined by their wives and children. And then they started making babies. At present, almost 80 percent of the 5.1 million children of unauthorized immigrants were born in the United States and are U.S. citizens. In the end, the militarization of the border transformed what had been a circular flow of workers going overwhelmingly to just three states - California, Texas, and Illinois - into a much larger settled population of families living across all 50 U.S. states - not a good outcome for a policy whose goal was the limitation and control of immigration.

Doubling down on a failed policy of border militarization by adding more fences and walls is not only moronic because it would continue, at great cost, a demonstrably counterproductive strategy for restricting immigration - but it is also senseless because net undocumented migration from Mexico has stopped. Trump appears not to have received the memo. By the Department of Homeland Security's own estimates, the total undocumented population peaked at 12 million in 2008, fell by a million by 2009, and since then has fluctuated around 11 million people.

Although the Great Recession may have been responsible for the sharp drop in 2008, undocumented Mexican migration had actually begun to decline around 2000 - not because of rising border enforcement, but because of Mexico's demographic transition. Whereas the total fertility rate stood at 7.2 children per woman in 1965, by 2000 the Mexican fertility rate had fallen to 2.4; today, it stands at 2.3 children per woman, just above replacement level, yielding much less demographic pressure for migration to the United States.

The huge cohorts of Mexicans born in the 1960s were mainly responsible for the large number of undocumented migrants entering the United States during the 1980s, but the small cohorts born since 2000 have produced declining rates of labor force growth in Mexico, which has become an aging society. Migration follows a characteristic age pattern that rises in the teens, peaks in the early 20s, and falls to near zero by age 30. If people don't migrate within that age range, they are very unlikely to make the journey later. What this means: The average age of Mexicans at risk of initiating undocumented migration has now pushed past the upper limit.

Although improving economic conditions would have, by now, led to a return of undocumented migrants if historical patterns still prevailed, this simply hasn't happened. Instead, the number of apprehensions at the border is at its lowest point since 1973. And in 2014, for the first time, a majority of those caught were Central Americans - not Mexicans - who have long been a small part of the undocumented inflow, and amounted to little more than a rounding error when Mexican apprehensions were regularly exceeding 1 million per year. Fertility rates are also dropping rapidly in Central America. Given current demographic realities south of the border, where 85 percent of undocumented migrants originate, a return to the 1980s and 1990s is extremely unlikely.

While net undocumented migration from Mexico may have ceased, legal immigration continues apace. Over the past 10 years, the United States experienced 1.6 million entries by legal immigrants and 3.9 million entries by temporary workers from Mexico. These migrants increasingly circulate back and forth in response to changing conditions and opportunities in each country, while undocumented migrants are paradoxically the ones who are trapped north of the border, unable to return to Mexico for fear of not being able to return to family, friends, and lives in the north. Rather than attempting to repress migration that occurs as a natural consequence of ongoing economic integration in North America, a more reasonable policy would be to bring the flows aboveboard and manage them in ways that benefit both countries, while protecting the rights of citizens on both sides of the border.

The United States already has a sizable guest-worker program and supports a legal framework that allows for significant legal immigration from Mexico each year. And with net undocumented migration at zero, the border is as under control as it's ever going to be. The only task remaining is finding a pathway to legal status for 11 million undocumented residents of the United States, giving them the freedom to come and go as they please and build a better life wherever they choose.

With few undocumented migrants entering and those already in the United States legalized, the problem of undocumented migration would be solved. This might be an unwelcome development for politicians who have grown used to using illegal migration as a sop to mobilize voters. But the reality is that undocumented migration has ended and won't be coming back. Spending billions of dollars more on border enforcement to solve a problem that no longer exists is, umm, what's the right word? Moronic.

Photo credit: Matthew Busch/Getty Images News

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Donald Trump's Mexican Border Wall Is a Moronic Idea

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's recently released proposal for immigration reform is simple: build a wall along the length of the U.S.-Mexico border, and make Mexico pay for it.

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"I would build a great wall"

After President Trump signed an executive order to advance plans for a wall along the border with Mexico, architects, conservationists, and environmental activists protested that it would do little to stop migrants from crossing the border but would create lasting problems for animals and the land. And don't forget the people.

A nearly 60-foot high concrete wall would make traveling to eat, drink, and mate more difficult for black bears, ocelots, and other species that live along the border, according to scientists and wildlife advocates. The energy-intensive process of producing cement to hold the concrete together adds to the environmental damage. Globally, the cement industry accounts for 5 percent of CO2 emissions.

Green groups also argue that tackling climate change would be a better way to curb the flow of refugees around the world. "If President Trump was as concerned about our nation's true national security issues, he would be tackling climate change head-on while safeguarding refugees and immigrants from the worst impacts of a warming planet," said League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski in a statement.

It could be tough for environmentalists to block the wall in the courts. An act passed in 2005 made it easier for the federal government to bypass local environmental laws in the name of national security.

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There's an environmental argument against Trump's border wall, too.

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"I would build a great wall" After President Trump signed an executive order to advance plans for a wall along the border with Mexico, architects, conservationists, and environmental activists protested that it would do little to stop migrants from crossing the border but would create lasting problems for animals and the land.

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Walls Work. When it comes to stopping drugs and illegal aliens across our borders, border walls have proven to be extremely effective. Border security relies on a combination of border infrastructure, technology, personnel and partnerships with law enforcement at the state, local, tribal, and federal level.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehends over 1,100 people a day crossing the border illegally. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) refuses entry to 7 known or suspected terrorists every day, 50 every week, and 2,500 every year.

DHS has seen a 300 percent increase in unaccompanied alien children (UACs) in the last eight months of 2017 - and a 600 percent increase in family units.

In Fiscal Year 2017, Border Patrol saw a 73 percent increase in assaults on officers along the Southwest border.

Thousands of aliens illegally re-enter the United States each year, with approximately 15,700 sentenced for illegal reentry in fiscal year 2016. This does not even include the many thousands more who evade detection, or those who are not charged with illegal reentry as part of a plea agreement.

The border jurisdictions bear the brunt of illegal alien crime, which is a large portion of the total crime in the United States. Of the 53,908 criminal cases filed by federal prosecutors in the 94 U.S. District Courts in fiscal year 2016, 23,573 cases (43.7 percent) were located in just the five border districts (Arizona, Southern District of California, New Mexico, Southern District of Texas, and Western District of Texas). In the five border districts, noncitizens accounted for 73.5 percent of all federal offenders sentenced for felonies or Class A misdemeanors in fiscal year 2016, and 47 percent of all federal non-immigration felonies or Class A misdemeanors.

Half of all federal criminal cases filed in U.S. District Courts in fiscal year 2016 (25,965 of 53,908 cases) were referred by the Department of Homeland Security.

Simply put-walls work. They have worked in Yuma, Arizona as a result of the 2006 Bipartisan Secure Border Act. They have also worked in San Diego. Both areas have seen 95 percent drops in attempted illegal border crossings.

Only 3.5 percent of UACs apprehended are eventually removed from the United States.

Illegal immigrants are incentivized to illegally enter by the low standard for credible fear and the lack of cost or sanction for filing a baseless asylum claim, which allows many of them to assert meritless claims that will not be adjudicated for years.

There has been a 1,700 percent increase in Credible Fear receipts from 2008 to 2016.

Annual asylum applications have tripled in the last 3 years.

There has been a 1,750 percent increase in the asylum backlog over the last 5 years. The affirmative asylum backlog at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has grown to 313,214 cases, as of January 28th. Another 290,000 asylum cases are pending in our immigration courts as of February 9.

The increase in claims filed is not associated with an increase in meritorious claims. As of FY 17, the asylum grant rate for defensive applications in immigration court is approximately 30%. On average, out of 88 claims that pass the credible fear screening, fewer than 13 will ultimately result in a grant of asylum.

The backlog of cases in our immigrations courts is approximately 675,000 cases.

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We Must Secure The Border And Build The Wall To Make America Safe Again

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Walls Work. When it comes to stopping drugs and illegal aliens across our borders, border walls have proven to be extremely effective. Border security relies on a combination of border infrastructure, technology, personnel and partnerships with law enforcement at the state, local, tribal, and federal level.

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One of Obama's pet federal judges says installing fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border could discriminate against minorities. Judge Beryl Howell's statement paves the way for further erosion of the Homeland Security project intended to control illegal immigration and curtail the spill-over of violent crime on the rise in Mexico. Howell stated in her ruling that the congressionally approved project may have a "disparate impact on lower-income minority communities."

This of course means that protecting the porous-and increasingly violent-southern border is politically incorrect. At least that's what the public college professor at the center of the case is working to prove and this month she got help from a sympathetic federal judge. Denise Gilman, a clinical professor at the taxpayer-funded University of Texas-Austin, is researching the "human rights impact" of erecting a barrier to protect the U.S. from terrorists, illegal immigrants, drug traffickers and other serious threats.
A 2006 federal law orders the construction of fencing or a wall along the most vulnerable portions of the nearly 2,000-mile southern border. This includes reinforced fencing along 700 miles of the southwest border with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) determining the exact spots. Professor Gilman wants the identities of the landowners in the planned construction site to shed light on the impact the fencing will have on indigenous, minority and low-income communities. The feds refused to provide the information, asserting that it's private.

The professor sued in federal court arguing that the public interest in how the fence will impact landowners outweighed any privacy concerns. The data will allow the public to analyze whether the government is treating property owners equally and fairly or whether the wall is being built in such a way that it disadvantages "minority property owners," according to the professor. It will also help the public understand the actual dimensions of the wall and decisions related to where it's placed.

Judge Beryl Howell, appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by President Obama in 2010, agreed that the public interest is significant. Her 37-page ruling also seems to indicate that she bought the discrimination argument. "Revealing the identities of landowners in the wall's planned construction site may shed light on the impact on indigenous communities, the disparate impact on lower-income minority communities, and the practices of private contractors," Howell wrote.

What do you think? Is the project to secure the border racist or is that a red-herring to distract from other issues?

Source: Judicial Watch

Photo: BBC World Service

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Border Fence Is Racist, According to Obama Judge - Truth And Action

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One of Obama's pet federal judges says installing fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border could discriminate against minorities. Judge Beryl Howell's statement paves the way for further erosion of the Homeland Security project intended to control illegal immigration and curtail the spill-over of violent crime on the rise in Mexico.

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Can a president be too strong? "Of course not," most people would answer. "It's always better to be strong than weak."

Perhaps. But can a president be so powerful that he or she threatens the nation's freedom? Should a president be allowed to violate the rights of the American people? Or to ignore the rights of other nations?

In recent years, many people think that the president has become too strong. They say that the president has taken so much power from the other branches of government that this threatens our democratic system.

Are there rules to tell a president how far he or she can go? The U.S. Constitution is supposed to prevent the president from using power in the wrong way. Article II states all the things that a president may do and some of the things that he or she may not do.

The Growing Power of the President

The Constitution was written over 200 years ago. The people who wrote it did not know about nuclear weapons or rockets to the moon or computers or television. They didn't know that the U.S. would some day be the richest, most powerful nation on Earth, with the power to destroy other nations in minutes. They didn't know that our economy would become so complicated and so big that it would require constant attention to keep it running smoothly.

Therefore, the rules that they wrote in the Constitution say little about a modern president's real power. George Washington would be shocked to know the following facts:

The president today has the power to command the instant destruction of entire cities. The U.S. has thousands of missiles with nuclear warheads. Only the president can give the signal to launch them. How much military power did president Washington command in 1789? A few cannons and 718 soldiers.

The president's power is felt all over the world. The president travels by jet from one nation to another. Foreign leaders often come to the White House. If Washington had tried to visit Europe or Asia, he would have been on a ship at sea for months at a time.

The American people expect the president to deal with a huge number of problems. If there is economic trouble, they expect the president to cure it. Modern presidents don't just try to administer the laws passed by Congress. Nor do they merely "recommend measures" to Congress as required by the Constitution (Article II, Section 3). Through staff members, they often bring pressure on Congress to pass favored bills, including some actually written in the Executive Department. In Washington's day, many people thought the president's powers were only those directly mentioned in Article II of the Constitution.

Does the Constitution Allow a "Strong" President?

How much power should the president have? How much does the Constitution set limits to the president's actions? These are very old questions.

Throughout American history, there have been many kinds of presidents. But a number of them have tended to fall into two very different groups in their attitudes toward presidential power.

The first believed that the powers of the president were few and limited. presidents of this type thought they could, or should, do no more than follow the exact words of the Constitution and carry out the laws of Congress. You might call them "weak executive" presidents.

That doesn't mean that they were weak people. It means only that they believed their actions were strictly limited by the Constitution. Modern examples of such presidents were Warren Harding (1921-23), Calvin Coolidge (1923-29), Herbert Hoover (1929-33), and Dwight Eisenhower (1953-61).

Some others have been "strong executive" presidents. They believed the Constitution gave them enough power to be strong leaders. In their view, a president could act in ways not specifically mentioned by the Constitution.

Almost all our most famous presidents since Abraham Lincoln have believed in a strong Presidency. Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09), Woodrow Wilson (1913-21), and Franklin Roosevelt (1933-45) all acted in bold new ways. Their critics were sometimes shocked by their actions and complained that the Constitution was ignored. But the "strong executive" defended himself.

The question of how strong a president should be may be more important now than ever before. After all, the president has gained enormous power in recent years. Some scholars who once favored a strong president now believe that the trend has gone too far. They believe that we should go back to the days when the president and congress were more or less equal in power.

What do you think? Below are arguments on either side of the question. Decide which argument is strongest.

The Case Against a Strong President

We often treat our presidents as if they were royalty. presidents live in a big mansion. They have servants and assistants whose only job is to make sure the president has everything he or she wants.

They don't get much personal contact with the American people because the Secret Service fears they may be attacked. As one critic says: "No one speaks to him unless spoken to first. No one ever tells him to go soak his head when his demands become unreasonable."

The president has taken more and more power at the expense of Congress. The people who wrote the Constitution believed in checking and balancing power between Congress and the president. But today, the president is more powerful than Congress.

One example of what has happened is in the power to declare war. The Constitution clearly gives that power to Congress only. Yet recent presidents have been able to fight wars without a formal declaration of war by Congress.

Take, for example, Vietnam. Though the president never asked Congress for a declaration of war against anyone in Southeast Asia, Congress allowed the president to conduct a war there.

Congress passed a resolution allowing the president "to take all necessary measures to ... prevent aggression [in Vietnam]." Then, over the course of the years, it consistently gave the president the money that he said he needed to do so. It may be said that by doing this Congress willingly gave up its exclusive power to declare war.

So run the arguments of those who are against the idea of a strong president.

The Case for a Strong President

The growth of the president's power is necessary. presidents should be strong and powerful.

The U.S. today needs a strong president. Who else can give the nation leadership? Who else can make the quick decisions that are needed in a national emergency?

In the old days, an army could move only as fast as its horses and sailing ships. There was plenty of time for Congress to debate issues of war and peace. But not today. Only the president can act fast enough in an emergency.

Furthermore, only the president can give real leadership on the many national problems. Congress cannot lead as well as the president simply because there is only one president, but there are 435 Representatives and 100 Senators. Members of Congress seldom agree on what to do.

Unlike members of Congress, the president is elected by all the voters. The president does not represent just one part but the whole of the country. And if the people think that the president has taken too much power, they can always elect someone else every four years.

So run the arguments of those who believe in the need for a strong president.

Adapted from The Presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court, Scholastic Inc., 1989.

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Can a President Be Too Strong? | Scholastic

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Can a president be too strong? "Of course not," most people would answer. "It's always better to be strong than weak." Perhaps. But can a president be so powerful that he or she threatens the nation's freedom? Should a president be allowed to violate the rights of the American people?