Shall
we wall off Canada, too?
Evading security cameras in the remote expanse along the U.S.
border, three Guatemalans waited till dusk to slip illicitly into our country.
This is the stuff of Donald Trump nightmares — and if he were to
witness such a scene, we can only imagine the furious rants that would follow.
But Trump will never see this scene or even know about it,
because he’s facing south, fulminating against Mexicans and assuring his
faithful followers that he’ll stop illegal entry into the U.S. by building a “beautiful, impenetrable wall” across our 2,000-mile border
with Mexico.
Meanwhile, the scene described took place way up north, where
rural Vermont connects to Canada. As the New York Times recently reported, “This area is a haven for smugglers and
cross-border criminal organizations.”
With so many of our nation’s political and security officials obsessed with the southern border, more and more criminal action — including the smuggling of people, drugs, and weapons — has plagued our 5,500-mile Canadian border, the longest in the world between two countries.
Running from the Atlantic to the Pacific through sparsely
populated and heavily wooded terrain, there’s often no clear demarcation of
where Canada ends and the U.S. begins. Some farms, homes, and businesses
actually sprawl across the border.
Only about 2,000 agents patrol this vast stretch, and officials
concede they don’t even have a good guess of how many people and how much
contraband is coming across, or where.
So, the question for Mr. Trump is: Shall we wall off Canada,
too? And how much of our public treasury, democratic idealism, and
international goodwill shall we dump into the folly of militarizing both
borders?
By simply thinking we can wall the world out, we’ll be walling
ourselves in — and that’s suicidal.
OtherWords
columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker.
He’s the editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown.
Distributed by OtherWords.org.