It's hard to believe that so many people in Congress could be so convinced that a wall would restrain undocumented migrants from Mexico and and the rest of Latin America. How incredibly naive!
Do the 80 senators and several hundred representatives in Congress who voted to construct a 700-mile wall really believe it will prevent hungry and desperate young people from getting through?
Instead of seeking a real solution to the problem, the United States has resorted to the use of force. Again. The American government is facing the issue of illegal immigration as if it were a war _ and it is not. Mexico isn't at war with the United States; the migrants crossing to the north do not belong to al-Qaida.
The congressmen, mostly Republican, who approved the construction of the wall, refused to take a long-term view. Their eyes, myopically, were on the Nov. 7, congressional elections. The message for the voter: "Look what we're doing, vote for us."
But, in fact, they achieved nothing. Yes, they passed approval of $1.2 billion to build a wall that won't be of any use. None at all. Migration flows like a torrent, and when it meets an obstacle _ like a wall, or a rock _ it merely courses around it. The half million migrants who annually come to seek work in the United States will simply cross at another point where there is no wall or through more remote areas.
The greatest irony is that those same undocumented immigrants, who the wall is attempting to scare away, will probably be hired to construct it.
The root cause of illegal immigration is economic. As long as there is unemployment and hunger in Mexico and jobs for them in the United States, they will continue to come. As long as Mexicans, making $5 a day at home, can earn $5 an hour in the United States, they will keep coming.
Every minute, an undocumented worker slips into the United States. Every minute. With or without a wall. And that will not change.
If the congressmen had really wanted to solve the immigration problem, they would have included two essential elements in the new law: legalizing the 12 million undocumented people already living in the United States, and allowing visas (or a jobs program) for the 500,000 who enter every year to work. But they didn't want to do that. They would rather engage in political scheming _ betting on re-election in a few weeks _ and postpone resolution of the country's most serious crisis after terrorism.
Congressmen who voted in favor of the construction of that wall insist it is only a first step _ that "total immigration reform" will follow. But in politics (as in life), any attempt to control the future is a futile exercise. The only thing that counts is living day by day.
What's more, I am astonished at President George W. Bush's dramatic shift. On Aug. 15, 2001, in a speech before the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Albuquerque, N.M., Bush said:
"Mexico is a friend of America, Mexico is our neighbor ... and that is why it's so important for us to tear down our barriers and walls that might separate Mexico from the United States."
Well, the same president who five years ago wanted to tear down "the barriers and the walls" on the border with Mexico, now condones and justifies them and signs off on having them erected.
What has become of the former Texas governor who so clearly understood the immigrants' plight? What happened to the presidential candidate who courted the Hispanic vote in 2000 and 2004? What became of the president who once thought of Mexico as America's best friend?
Bush's signature was never in doubt. In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer last week, the president confirmed he would sign the bill.
Mexico, of course, is now objecting and sending a formal complaint about the impending construction of the wall, having prayed that Bush would veto the bill. But it seems they don't get CNN at Los Pinos (the Mexican president's official residence).
Good intentions are useless. Look at the way Mexican President Vicente Fox's administration is ending. The same man who wanted to govern for Mexicans on both sides of the frontier and who based his foreign policy with the United States on the negotiation of an immigration agreement, leaves us instead with a brand new wall on the border.
Where are the Mexican politicians, ambassadors, lobbyists and functionaries who should have met with every single American congressman in order to avoid the construction of the wall? The wall is the clearest sign that Mexico's foreign policy with the United States wound up in the mud.
Fox leaves and a wall arrives.
No matter how you look at it (from Mexico or from the United States perspective), the wall is a 700-mile mistake. It reflects the worst of the United States, the incompetence of Mexican politicians and the tragedy of people who are forced to leave their homelands.
This new wall will be measured, too, in fatalities; the longer it is, the more dead immigrants there will be on the border.
The wall is a fiasco and shameful failure.