In his article “Trumpshould claim victory on the border and abandon his foolish wall” posted in the
LA Times on April 27, 2017, David Horsey makes the case that Trump should drop
the idea of building the wall. Horsey claims that Trump ‘could simply declare
victory and say a wall along the border with Mexico is no longer necessary
because illegal crossings have diminished to a trickle,’ which is somewhat true
seeing that the people apprehended by the Border Patrol has dropped to 64%
since last year. If Trump were to say that the problem was fixed then ‘his most
ardent admirers will have no objection,’ because ‘they believe anything he says’
and ‘ most of them already interpreted talk of a wall as hyperbole, an amusing
exaggeration that only meant he was going to get tougher on undocumented
immigrants.’ John F. Kelly, secretary of Homeland Security said in a Senate
testimony “It’s unlikely that we will build a wall or physical barrier” that
border security will most likely be beefed up with smaller fences, drones,
electronic monitoring, etc.. Horsey provides his own solution to decreasing the
number of people attempting to cross the border, ‘Add to that assistance
programs for Central American countries whose problems with criminal gangs and
poverty are driving emigrants north.’ The latest plan from Rep. Dana
Rohrabacher is to raise money for the wall by offering U.S. citizenship to any
wealthy foreigner willing to pay $1 million. I, personally, don’t know my
opinion on the wall, but I think if Trump is constantly making promises on a
large controversial topic then he needs to come through, otherwise he won’t be
taken seriously when it comes to topics as serious as this.
