{"id":397057,"date":"2019-02-24T12:09:02","date_gmt":"2019-02-24T11:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-emperors-new-wall\/"},"modified":"2019-02-24T12:09:02","modified_gmt":"2019-02-24T11:09:02","slug":"the-emperors-new-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-emperors-new-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"The Emperor\u2019s New Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(CD editor’s note: This article was originally published Feb. 14\u2014one day before President Donald Trump issued his emergency declaration to fund his border wall.)<\/em><\/p>\n

“Walls\u201d, \u201cfencing\u201d, \u201cbarriers\u201d, \u201csteel slats\u201d \u2013 many are the terms being bandied around by lawmakers in the United States as they seek compromise on the further fortification of the US-Mexican border. Although a second government shutdown tomorrow looks unlikely, President Donald Trump’s remarks to his supporters that \u201cwe\u2019re building the wall anyway\u201d<\/a> indicate that he will continue to search for ways to forcefully fulfil one the central promises of his 2016 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

The southern border of the United States has been portrayed by the US government as a national security threat for much longer than Trump has been in office. Although barriers first started to go up in the major border cities in the early 1990s, it was the fall of the twin towers on 9\/11 and the start of the \u2018war on terror\u2019 that precipitated the Secure Border Initiative and the doubling of the border protection budget<\/a> to $12 billion. The existing barriers \u2013 initially constructed from recycled landing strips used in the Vietnam War \u2013 were fortified at a cost of $775 million, and a primary fence nearly 700 miles long was constructed at a cost to the US tax payer of $3.9 million per mile. Before the US spends more on more of the same, it\u2019s worth asking how much of an actual security function the existing<\/em> wall plays.<\/p>\n

The physical presence of walls can certainly feel impressive, reminiscent of a past time of fortresses and militias. Yet in today\u2019s day and age, they attempt to project a power they no longer possess. Walls simply do not stop the movement of people \u2013 this needs to made clear from the outset. As long as migrants perceive<\/a> the situation on the other side to be better than what they could ever hope to attain on theirs, they will find ways to cross. They will go around<\/em> the wall by sea; under<\/em> it through tunnels; over it<\/em> with ladders; through<\/em> it with blowtorches; and across<\/em> it at official checkpoints through subterfuge and inventive smuggling. As Janet Napolitano, a former secretary of homeland security, once said, \u201cYou show me a 50-foot wall, and I\u2019ll show you a 51-foot ladder\u201d. Where there is a will there is a way.<\/p>\n

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Meanwhile, the great human cost of border militarisation and securitisation at \u201cLa Linea\u201d (as the southern border is informally called) is evident in the data on migrant deaths. The IOM Missing Migrant Project<\/a> estimates that 124 individuals have died since 2014 on this border. This is surely an underestimate, given that most migrants attempt the crossing in the most inaccessible and dangerous areas to avoid detection. And paradoxically, as the border becomes increasingly fortified and harder to cross, migrants are incentivised to settle in the United States permanently once they make it over. From the standpoint of the wall\u2019s proponents, this can only be seen as counterproductive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The sociological impact of border militarisation is equally troubling. Walls are symbolic reiterations of frontiers and thus markers of difference \u2013 a physical declaration of the difference between \u2018us\u2019 and \u2018them\u2019. Thus it is no surprise that the increasing fortification of the southern border over the past 50 years has paralleled the worsening of attitudes<\/a> towards Mexicans and Latinos<\/em>, culminating<\/a> in the generalised fear of the \u201cLatino Threat\u201d. This often spills over into outright hostility, weakening social cohesion and fuelling anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy initiatives, including projects to refuse public education to the children of undocumented immigrants and halt affirmative action programmes. Similar dynamics are at work in the rise of border patrol vigilante organisations such as the \u201cMinutemen<\/a>\u201d, which often use racist or discriminatory language when discussing immigrants and when encouraging their members to exercise their \u2018right\u2019 to decide who is worthy of being a US citizen. Among their other activities, the Minutemen allow supporters of the cause to sponsor plates with engraved personalised messages directed at the immigrants, which are then nailed to the fence communicating everything from rancour to aggression (Drop Dead, You are not welcome in the USA, Stay Out or Die, etc).<\/p>\n

While Trump insists that a wall is the only effective method of securing the southern border, it is highly unlikely that this is true. If it does eventually get built, its effect on the flows of people and contraband will be radically limited by the technology and ingenuity of those on the other side. This means that, at the end of the day, the power of whatever Trump manages will only ever be largely symbolic. Perhaps that is why it is so attractive to him anyway: a symbol that visually and psychologically gratifies his wish to project rectitude, autonomy and might.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Via Common Dreams<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(CD editor’s note: This article was originally published Feb. 14\u2014one day before President Donald Trump issued his emergency declaration to fund his border wall.) “Walls\u201d, \u201cfencing\u201d, \u201cbarriers\u201d, \u201csteel slats\u201d \u2013 many are the terms being bandied around by lawmakers in the United States as they seek compromise on the further fortification of the US-Mexican border. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-397057","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}