By Victor Davis Hanson | Townhall
There was likely never going to be "comprehensive
immigration reform" or any deal amnestying the DACA recipients in exchange
for building the wall.
Democrats in the present political landscape will not
consent to a wall. For them, a successful border wall is now considered bad
politics in almost every manner imaginable.
Yet 12 years ago, Congress, with broad bipartisan
support, passed the Security Fence of Act of 2006. The bill was signed into law
by then-President George W. Bush to overwhelming public applause. The stopgap
legislation led to some 650 miles of a mostly inexpensive steel fence while
still leaving about two-thirds of the 1,950-mile border unfenced.
In those days there were not, as now, nearly 50 million
foreign-born immigrants living in the United States, perhaps nearly 15 million
of them illegally.
Sheer numbers have radically changed electoral politics.
Take California. One out of every four residents in California is foreign-born.
Not since 2006 has any California Republican been elected to statewide office.
The solidly blue states of the American Southwest,
including Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, voted red as recently as 2004 for
George W. Bush.
Progressives understandably conclude that de facto open borders
are good long-term politics.
Once upon a time, Democrats such as Hillary and Bill
Clinton and Barack Obama talked tough about illegal immigration. They even
ruled out amnesty while talking up a new border wall.
In those days, progressives saw illegal immigration as
illiberal -- or at least not as a winning proposition among union households
and the working poor.
Democratic constituencies opposed importing inexpensive
foreign labor for corporate bosses. Welfare rights groups believed that massive
illegal immigration would swamp social services and curtail government help to
American poor of the barrios and the inner city.
So, what happened? Again, numbers.
Hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants have
flocked into the United States over the last decade. In addition, the Obama
administration discouraged the melting-pot assimilationist model of integrating
only legal immigrants.
Salad-bowl multiculturalism, growing tribalism and large
numbers of unassimilated immigrants added up to politically advantageous
demography for Democrats in the long run.
In contrast, a wall would likely reduce illegal
immigration dramatically and with it future Democratic constituents. Legal,
meritocratic, measured and diverse immigration in its place would likely end up
being politically neutral. And without fresh waves of undocumented immigrants
from south of the border, identity politics would wane.
A wall also would radically change the optics of illegal
immigration. Currently, in unsecured border areas, armed border patrol guards
sometimes stand behind barbed wire. Without a wall, they are forced to rely on
dogs and tear gas when rushed by would-be border crossers. They are easy
targets for stone-throwers on the Mexican side of the border.
A high wall would end that. Border guards would be mostly
invisible from the Mexican side of the wall. Barbed wire, dogs and tear gas
astride the border -- the ingredients for media sensationalism -- would be
unnecessary. Instead, footage of would-be border crossers trying to climb 30-foot
walls would emphasize the degree to which some are callously breaking the law.
Such imagery would remind the world that undocumented
immigrants are not always noble victims but often selfish young adult males who
have little regard for the millions of aspiring immigrants who wait patiently
in line and follow the rules to enter the United State lawfully.
More importantly, thousands of undocumented immigrants
cross miles of dangerous, unguarded borderlands each year to walk for days in
the desert. Often, they fall prey to dangers ranging from cartel gangs to
dehydration.
Usually, the United States is somehow blamed for their
plight, even though a few years ago the Mexican government issued a comic book
with instructions on how citizens could most effectively break U.S. law and
cross the border.
The wall would make illegal crossings almost impossible,
saving lives.
Latin American governments and Democratic operatives
assume that lax border enforcement facilitates the outflow of billions of
dollars in remittances sent south of the border and helps flip red states blue.
All prior efforts to ensure border security -- sanctions
against employers, threats to cut off foreign aid to Mexico and Central
America, and talk of tamper-proof identity cards -- have failed.
Instead, amnesties, expanded entitlements and hundreds of
sanctuary jurisdictions offer incentives for waves of undocumented immigrants.
The reason a secure borer wall has not been -- and may
not be -- built is not apprehension that it would not work, but rather real
fear that it would work only too well.
Victor
Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford
University. His latest book is The Savior
Generals from BloomsburyBooks.
