Review of The Reasons Why Trump Proposed Border Wall

Walls and borders have been around for tens of thousands of years they serve purposes such as showing one's territory or serve as a defence mechanism. As protective walls arose around the world they affected how people lived, worked, and fought. Although long before walls were built for protection of cities or villages men were trained to serve as defenders. This required boys and men to go through brutal training to make them not fear of enemies, they were pushed into bees nest, poked with spears, and beaten with sticks, they also fought naked in the dark so they would never crave armour. Religion played a big role in training warriors, if the fear of death is the source of all fear then men had to be taught that death was not the end. They were taught that their souls would live forever and their souls would ascend to Valhalla or some other paradise.

Walled cities established a different strategy for achieving security and redefined the role of men. They stopped tormenting boys and men received respect without scoring their first kill. Women married men who had never fought in war and boys became men without enduring brutal beatings to show manhood, men became workers rather than warriors.

As walled cities spread around the world they usually combined into larger states which constructed larger walls. When the king of UR, a state that is now modern day Iraq, declared in 2,000 B.C. that his newly constructed border wall would allow his people to live and grow peacefully in green meadows. He was creating a template that would be followed for centuries of kings and emperors.

Rome Joined the great age of walls in the second century AD when the emperor Hadrian implemented a vast program to fortify Rome's borders on three continents. Hadrian's most famous work was the stone wall in northern england is copied by other walls built by Hadrian in stone. The Persians became prolific builders of border walls during the Sassanid era. In Ukraine, the great Kievan state followed a few centuries later when Vladimir I, had his kingdom enclosed on all sides with the longest and most solid of walls because of the roving enemy.

Today the Great wall of China and all other major walls built many years ago mostly still remain but serve no boarder or enemy protection. Now walls serve as borders to certain nations to keep illegal immigrants from crossing over or to show where boundaries are such as the fences in our yards show property boundaries.

Ancient walls were primarily built for defence purposes as I already mentioned. Nowadays they are built more to prevent immigration, terrorism, and the flow of illegal drugs. But there is a common idea of keeping outsiders out. Trump's proposed wall on the southern border of the U.S. would stop the flow of immigration from central and south america and also Mexico. Another reason would be to stop the movement of the drug flow from cartel.

The wall Trump is proposing to build will stretch nearly two thousand miles along the southern border of the U.S. and cost merely twenty to forty billion dollars which has brought a lot of controversy to today's political standings mostly by democrats. Democrats say that building the wall would be a waste of taxpayers money, a standoff over funding for the wall led to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, lasting thirty five days between December and January.

Before Trump took office there was six hundred and fifty four miles of wall along the border made up of three hundred and fifty four miles of anti pedestrian and three hundred miles of anti vehicle fencing. Sense his election he promised to build the wall two thousand miles along the whole border of the U.S. and Mexico. While he has been in office there has been 1.7 billion dollars funded to start the project and one hundred and twenty four miles of the new wall has been built. Although Trump blames the wall for illegal immigration it was mostly by people coming in legally with visas and overstaying their departure date. Canadians where the highest group of overstayers according to the DHS nearly four hundred thousand canadians overstayed followed by mexicans, and brazilians.

Trumps statistics about the opioid epidemic crossing the border are correct but according to some experts he is wrong, the wall wouldn’t slow down the flow of drugs because of the one big foe to the wall which is vehicle transportation. Traffickers are really good at figuring ways around obstacles. One of the big border security measures typically targets the areas between the legal ports of entry but the majority of drugs comes through the legal ports of entry. In 2015 the DEA stated that drug traffickers transported the majority of their goods through the southwest border through legal points of entry using passenger vehicles or tractor trailers. The DEA further stated that marijuana is often trafficked between the points of entry, such as the wall, but the harder drugs like cocaine, meth, and heroine mostly came through the border legally. Christopher Willson the deputy director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson center stated, “If the goal of border security policy is to cut into drug trafficking then investments need to be made at the point of entries.” These would include things like more personnel, drug sniffing dogs, X-rays, and other ways of trying to stop drug trafficking.

Another reason Trump claims the wall needs to be rebuilt is because of terrorism. Trump and other officials claim that migrants from the middle east have traveled with the thousands of hondurans through the U.S. border. Since 2001, fifteen suspected middle easterners that were tied up with al qidah have been apprehended at the U.S. Mexico border. In 2018 there was 4,000 suspected terrorists or suspected terrorists tried to get into the U.S. through the Mexico border but were not granted access by the DHS. Some reports have stated the by building the wall will not stop the threat of terrorism or that it is linked to terrorists entering the country. Since 1975 there has only been nine who entered illegally that have committed or attempted an attack on U.S. soil, and only three of them entered through the U.S. Mexico border. The other six came through others ways some through Canada and did so in the early 1990s. All of the people murdered on by foreign born terrorists on U.S. soil since 1975 have been killed by those who entered legally. Alex Nowrasteh, a senior immigration analyst says, “Even if the border wall stopped immigration, it would not have stopped the threats of attack on the U.S. in the last decades.”

Trump also proposed that the wall would help “curb” human trafficking. “The wall is going to be built, and the wall is going to stop drugs, and it's going to stop people coming in that shouldn’t be here, and it's going to have an effect on human trafficking, which is a tremendous problem in this world.” Says Trump in an article about human trafficking by NBCnews. Some democrats say that the wall wouldn't stop human trafficking, some in the human trafficking department say that traffickers that can't get into the states use it as a tool they can use different paths as leverage over their victims. Experts say that victims of trafficking go through a walk through hell to cross the border with some dying along the way and by implementing the border it would only make the walk, or the way across even more treacherous and many more victims would die along the way.

Between September 30, 2015 and August 31, 2016, 508 human trafficking victims were reported according to the Polaris data.Of most people taken across the border 49% were trafficked for the purpose of labor trafficking, sex trafficking made up the other 51% of victims.

Some biologists say that building the wall could destroy the natural habitat surrounding the areas of where the wall would be built. “Whatever they build, it’s going to be destructive to natural habitat.” says Bob Dreher, the head attorney of Defenders of Wildlife conservation programs. By building the wall it would stretch from the Gulf of Mexico in Texas to the Pacific Ocean in California over one of the nations most diverse landscapes. It would include six separate ecoregions ranging from desert shrub to forest woodlands, wetland marshes, both fresh and saltwater. It would also include going through seven national parks including, the Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, Big Bend National Park. In Texas the National Butterfly Center where more than 200 butterfly species reside was notified that the wall would divide the 100 acer sanctuary placing 70% of it on the Mexico side.

Building the wall could endure flooding, after building 700 miles of border in Arizona the barriers acted as dams during the raining season it would trap debris that harmed certain wildlife growing and living in that area.

The pros to building the wall would include homeland security it would slow the drugs and immigration down tremendously. Like I said earlier the wall would have a major impact in all sorts of ways by illegal immigration, to drug cartel moving drugs or even the movement of human trafficking.

To conclude on the wall and how it would affect the U.S. some of my thoughts are that the wall would slow down illegal immigration and drugs getting in. I don't think it will completely stop every crisis like human trafficking or immigration but in 2018 illegal immigration cost the U.S. upwards of 200 billion dollars. By building the wall It could lower how much money is lost. The wall would only cost 20 to 40 billion dollars its incomparable to how much money the U.S. spent in just one year on illagals.

By putting more money into certain depatments could also help slow down the amount of drugs transported into the states as I stated ealier. The wall should be built it would only be fair to the people who live in America and pay taxes every year, it could only help America for the better.