Yet those 13 people — along with others who have recently lost their lives in dangerous crossings — might not have met their grisly fate if the Biden administration’s concept of compassion wasn’t also an inducement to recklessness.
And they would not have been killed if a wall had been standing in their way.
That’s a conclusion I’ve come to reluctantly, and not because I’ve abandoned my disgust with Donald Trump. Walls are ugly things: symbols of defensive, suspicious, often closed-minded civilizations. Walls are, invariably, permeable: Whatever else a border wall will do, it will not seal off America from unwanted visitors or undocumented workers — roughly half of whom arrive legally and overstay their visas.
Walls also cannot address the root cause of our immigration crisis, which stems from a combination of social collapse south of the border and the pull of American life north of it.
But a well-built wall should still be a central part of an overall immigration fix. It’s an imperfect but functional deterrent against the most reckless forms of border crossing. It’s a barrier against sudden future surges of mass migration.