Borders

After watching the documentary The Walls of Shame about the Mexican-American, Palestinian-Israeli borders, and the Berlin Wall it made me think what is the purpose of border walls and why they are made. I was born and grew up in San Diego so the border has been a constant topic of discussion my whole life. I have always heard on the news of people saying that we need to strengthen our border security and that we should close it off to Mexico. On the other hand I have heard the opposite my whole life of people saying that a wall will not solve any of our problems and that we need to find other means of dealing with the influx of illegal immigrants. Ultimately in my opinion I do not believe in strengthening and building a physical wall on the Mexican-American border because instead we should have different ways of dealing with the problem at hand, but after watching the documentary I did gain a sort of understanding why people feel walls are necessary even though they are not right.

            First for people to think that they need to build walls throughout border zones can be traced back to fear. For instance the documentary showed testimonials from California minutemen and the most common topic that kept coming up from them about why they are watching the borders is because of security. What I first did not understand is what they meant about security, because immigrants coming up from the border are generally not dangerous people and usually have no weapons, but then I understood what they meant about security just from my own life exposure to the issue growing up so close to the border. People are not afraid of militant people crossing into America; instead they are afraid of the change that will happen internally in our country. It is amazing to see the differences on both sides of the Mexican-American border due to the pollution and the state of the social economics in both of the countries because it is pretty drastic. Looking at the differences I think most people in the United States are scared of the illegal immigrants because they think that they will change America for the worse. I think this fear is seriously going to hurt our relationships and cause racist thoughts because building and maintaining a wall will just make things worse.

            Instead of building a wall I think that better legislation needs to happen because it is going to be impossible to fully stop people from illegally coming into America. I believe that if someone wants to come here we need to make an easier system of having them come to us so that we can document them instead of people randomly coming into our country without knowing whom they are or where they are going. With this documentation system we can then keep a census on immigrants and they can get jobs and pay taxes. I am not saying to make everyone that comes here a citizen, because I think they should still come through the regular channels to become one, but that we just need to better monitor illegal immigrants and have them pay their taxes and due their part if they choose to stay here in America. We are a country founded on immigration we should not close it off to people that want to be here to gain better life opportunities.