Borderline Insanity

Both Israel and the United States are debating border issues. In Israel the talk is about building a wall separating Israel from Palestine. In the US the talk is about building a wall separating the America from Mexico.

I don’t have a problem with either wall. While some liberals use President Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall” (referring to the Berlin Wall), to turn us against wall building, they have allowed rhetoric to trump reason. The purpose of the Berlin Wall was to keep East Germans in, not to keep West Germans out. The walls in the US and Israel are not meant to keep people from leaving these countries, but to keep people from entering them illegally. The difference is huge.

To be pro-wall, of course, I have to address the three major obstacles that building such walls present. Here they are:

1. OBSTACLE: cost. SOLUTION: sell the wall as advertising space. In Israel one side would advertise in Hebrew and the other in Arabic. In the US both sides would advertise in Spanish. I am certain both walls would pay for themselves within a year or two.

2. OBSTACLE: tunnels. SOLUTION: Whack-o-Mole. It is true that enterprising people will build tunnels as they have in Gaza and Arizona. My solution is to build a giant Whack-o-Mole game that would slam massive hammer blows on any head that pops up on our side of the wall. The hammers would run on high speed magnetic railroad tracks, the kind the Japanese use to move people, and be triggered by sensors that would pick up the sounds of people digging toward the surface. People could access the Whack-o-Mole via the internet and bet on where the strike will take place and how many will be hit. 75% of the monies bet will go for prize money similar to state lotteries. The rest will be used to train English and Spanish speaking Americans to speak Chinese. A similar Whack-o-Mole would be built in Israel. This Whack-O-Mole solution will have the added benefit of encouraging Americans and Israelis to experiment with new high speed train technology, which might be used to alleviate traffic and pollution problems.

3. OBSTACLE: human casualties. SOLUTION: faith and manifest destiny. When the walls are completed, there will be tens of thousands of Israelis on the Palestinian side of the Israeli Wall and millions of illegal aliens on the American side of the American Wall. What do we do with all these people?

The Israelis are contemplating using their military to forcibly remove the West Bank settlers. As we saw in Gaza, this is very dangerous and emotionally painful. The US is considering making the “wrong siders” felons, but that would clog our courts and jails even more then they are now, a very bad prospect. I have a better idea.

Israel should complete their wall and withdraw their army to the Israeli side. Don’t even try to move the settlers. Simply announce that the army will no longer be used to protect Israelis who choose to live on the Palestinian side of the wall. Most settlers will suddenly find reasons to move to Israel, and those who insist God wants them in Palestine will have to rely on God to protect them. They have tried this before, and it doesn’t work, but that is their problem.

Solving the population problem in the US is just as easy. We can’t forcibly repatriate eleven million illegal aliens, and even if we could they and tens of millions more will continue to seek illegal entry into the United States. So rather than build the wall along the northern Mexican border, I suggest we annex Mexico and build it along the southern tip. This will have tremendous benefits.

First, the wall will be much smaller and cheaper to build.

Second, all those Mexicans who want to come to the US will suddenly be in the US without having to leave home.

Third, all those Americans who want to hire Mexicans to do jobs that Americans won’t do, can now simply send buses to pick them up—and the “them” will be Americans. This, of course, may cause a new problem.

As soon as these Mexicans become Americans they too will no longer want to do those jobs, so we may have to build the wall further and further south until the whole hemisphere is American and no one will do those jobs and we will be forced to live without all the goods that illegals make which will reduce us to a third world country encouraging most of us to move illegally to Switzerland in order to find work doing jobs that Swiss won’t do for themselves. I am not sure what these jobs may be, but I for one am practicing shouting Ricola into a huge horn just in case.

As Frost said, good fences make good neighbors. Of course he was being sarcastic, but no one ever reads the whole poem, so don’t let that fact bother you.