Drawing the line at the wall

Remember when you were still in grade school and you built small walls on the floor with your Legos to separate your playing space from your brother's or sister's? The thin multicolored line that snaked straight down the center of the playroom, dividing the space up. Or maybe you drew lines in the sand at the beach. Your sand castle goes there and mine goes here. In a materialistic world, that separation of property is innate and almost natural. Almost.Like hundreds of other students at the College this weekend, I was one of the masses that laid out in the sun with a magazine or some homework on the grass to take advantage of the gorgeous weather and equally handsome campus in the spring. I flipped through the shiny pictures of the latest National Geographic (yes, I am that dorky) and marveled at the many articles. I came across one with pictures of a rusted steel wall that cut the desert landscape of the picture in half. On one side were tenement slums, garbage pushed up to the wall, mangy dogs and dry red clay dirt. The other side featured cultivated green grass, a small town off in the distance and an American flag. Welcome to the U.S.-Mexican Border at Tijuana.

There has been much talk in the past months of building a wall along the border. Many words have been thrown around in relation to it, such as "national security," "economy" and "illegal." But what would this wall really accomplish if built? It would definitely send Mexicans the statement of "this is where I belong and this is where you don't." Walls are built for protection; they are built to keep the owners in and the outside world out. Walls mutely scream that neighbors are embarrassed of each other. Other than its implications of embarrassment and intolerance, this wall would boldly announce a message of hypocrisy. It would take everything our beloved country is built on, such as liberty, freedom and capitalism and squeeze it between the links of its fence. We are a nation made up of the immigrants from around the globe. Since the first settlement of Jamestown in the early 1600s to the Statue of Liberty welcoming thousands in the 1900s, we have historically, to be completely clich, been a melting pot of other cultures. This is a national identity that we have not only cherished since an early age, but has also set us apart from every other nation. Since when are we justified in telling a nationality, "No, please don't come in," when we grant access to others?

I understand the need to secure the border because of drug trafficking, but I invite supporters of the wall for that reason to consider the following: walls are built to be conquered. It would act like a magnet--a physical beacon drawing more in because of its sheer defiance. It would be remarkably similar to drinking and its underage restrictions. Half of the fun is the Olympic event of getting the alcohol and not getting caught.

The United States needs the flow of culture and commerce that immigration provides. The article tells of many illegals jumping the fences in the morning to work small jobs before jumping back at night with their small wages to support their families. Border towns on the American side once relied on the steady stream of people to support their local economies. Now that many Mexicans have stopped going back and forth regularly, those small economies have been adversely affected.

Besides sending an insulting message to our next door neighbors that negatively reflects on our own tolerance, this wall would send an international message of childish fear and instability. At a time when our nation is pioneering an international war on terror, the last thing we need to do is show the international community that in order to feel safe, we need to fortify all of our borders and push all outsiders away. It does not say much for our level of confidence. Illegal immigration will not stop in the face of a flimsy physical barrier. In order for this problem of illegal immigration to improve, we need to start teaching our children to stop drawing lines in the sand and learn to accept other cultures.