Scene from The Great Wall (with Matt Damon).
In the 2016 film, the Great Wall was built not to keep out Huns, but to keep out monsters.
Rulers have built a few great walls in world history.
The oldest one on record was the Chinese “Great Wall” built around 220 B.C.
For some reason, some voters say they’ll vote for Trump in November of 2024—not because they like him as a man—but because they like “his policies.”
One of his “policies” was to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
The 1,500-mile Chinese Great Wall* was constructed between Inner Mongolia and China.
It was built with conscripted labor, over generations, and according to Chinese folklore each stone equates with the loss of one human life.
The gigantic monetary cost was a factor in the fall of the Ch’in Dynasty.
The height of the Great Wall ranged from 15-50 feet.
Its’ effectiveness depended on the ability of nearby troops to defend it against roaming tribes, like the Huns.
Around 117-122 A.D., the 73-mile Hadrian’s Wall* was built to secure the Roman north-western border, as well as control commerce and immigration.
(The wall didn’t separate Britain from Scotland.)
This wall was about 20 feet high, had a walkway on top (patrolled by sentries), and also had a 30-foot ditch/fosse at its’ base.
Just the construction of the ditch/enforcement zone alone involved moving nearly 2 million yards of rock and earth, and the structure took around five years to build.
According to historical accounts, Hadrian actually helped design Hadrian’s Wall; Hadrian (unlike Trump) had design and construction knowledge.
As to the U.S.-Mexico border barriers, before WWII, fences were built to keep cattle on their side of the border.
Beginning with the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, fences began to be built, specifically to keep Mexican people out.
As late as 1986, however, Ronald Reagan disparaged putting up more barriers and fences at the border, saying—during a debate with George H.W. Bush—that instead there should be more legal work permits for Mexicans.
Reagan did end up building more fences.
After Reagan’s administration, both Democratic and Republican administrations gradually added to barriers.
In addition, Presidents maintained the fences that were already there, just as President Biden is doing now.
During Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, he promised to build a concrete barrier between the U.S. and Mexico...which Mexico would pay for.
Potential voters seemed to like the “idea” of less immigration from Mexico, and ignored the wall’s impracticality.
What Trump, and his MAGA supporters, didn’t realize was that there were many good reasons why building a heavier barrier was not a good idea.
Chief among the reasons, was cost.
There’s also the difficulty that the Federal Government doesn’t own most of the land along the border.
Finally, there are all the problems that more and heavier barriers cause in terms of the ecosystem, animal habitats, and flooding.
Trump’s hostility toward Mexicans, and immigration, helped win him the White House.
Congress approved $1.375 billion for the wall in 2021, and a total of $15 billion was appropriated in total, some derived from Pentagon funds.
(President Biden was able to send $2.2 billion back to the Pentagon. He’d like to claw back more of the billions that have not yet been spent, but for that he’d need Congressional approval.)
According to a BBC News article—“Trump Wall: How Much Has He Actually Built” (Lucy Rodgers and Dominic Bailey, updated 10/31/2020)—there were 654 miles of barrier fence, between the U.S and Mexico, when Trump took office in 2016.
(354 miles were barricades and 300 miles were fencing.)
By 2020, there was 669 miles of primary barrier, a gain of only 15 miles, where there had been no barrier before.
Actually, the Trump “Wall” isn’t really a wall at all; it’s steel fencing (bollard) that you can see through.
(Better for the environment, and cheaper, too!)
However, Trump’s new fence can be cut through with power tools available at any hardware store.
(Read the Washington Post article: “Smugglers Are Sawing Through New Sections of Trump’s Border Wall.”)
In the end, the U.S. government paid for Trump’s fence.
The original estimated cost was $20 million per mile ($11 billion total).
However—between paying for steel and concrete, and paying for land—that number grew to as much as $46 million per mile, in some sections.
Is a steel fence really worth that much money, especially when it’s clearly ineffective?
According to U.S. News & World Report, (Claire Hansen, 2/7/2022) the 18- to 30-foot steel fencing is anchored in concrete, and some of the barriers feature sensors, lights, and even cameras.
Whether all cameras are being monitored, is unclear.
What Trump’s fence has in common—with the Great Wall of China and Hadrian’s Wall—is that all three were very expensive, and require maintenance.
What they don’t have in common is that the Chinese wall, and the Roman wall, were adequately staffed with soldiers.
Without soldiers, or a monitoring system, no barrier fence (or wall) can keep people out.
While the Chinese and Roman governments had control of the land—where they built the Great Wall and Hadrian’s Wall—the Federal Government doesn’t own all the land where it would like to put up a fence.
The people who do own the land (private citizens, various nature preserves, and Native American tribes) have fought against building more barriers on their property.
(That’s one of the reasons why there was only a net gain of 15 miles.)
Besides attempting to build the “Trump Wall,” Trump’s minions did try to stem the immigration flow between the U.S. and Mexico by taking 472 administrative actions.
These actions mainly diminished humanitarian protections, however, and made the immigration system even more chaotic.
Recently, a new immigration bill was worked out by the Senate, and (likely) won’t even be considered by the House.
This bill contains a 70/30 blend of right-wing and progressive ideas designed to help solve the immigration crisis:
- Emergency powers would be invoked, if more than 5,000 people enter on a given day.
- People wouldn’t need to wait 180 days for a work permit; they’d receive a permit as soon as they passed a much higher initial screening.
- Unauthorized immigrants, once living in the U.S., would face a 13-year waiting period to become citizens.
- The administration would be allowed to immediately deport migrants (except unaccompanied minors) who don’t enter at official ports of entry.
- Up to 4,300 new asylum officers would be hired to work on asylum cases.
President Obama actually deported more immigrants during his administration than President Trump.
President Obama deported 3.2 million immigrants between 2009-2012, and another 2.2 million immigrants between 2012-2016.
Trump deported around 2 million immigrants.
Candidate Trump has promised that, if elected in 2024, he’d change his 2016-2020 pattern, and start a mass deportation plan.
If Trump uses political advisor Stephen Miller’s proposals, he’d do this—not through the courts—but by federalizing the National Guard.
I’m not sure where Trump is planning to obtain the lists of who is to be deported, or how people would be removed.
Would the deportees be loaded on airplanes, in buses, or in train/cattle cars?
But then, Trump has never been a “detail man.” He’s a “big picture” person.
That’s why his wall (or fence) plans failed.
*The historical data on the Chinese Great Wall, and Hadrian’s Wall, is taken from articles in the last printed 24-volume set (1997) of Collier’s Encyclopedia.
