The wall around Obama's house won't keep drugs out of there either, but so what?
Some people managed to get over the Berlin wall once in a while, too, but they didn't tear it down; that's because it worked far more often than it failed. The wall will make it much easier to focus on the more elaborate and time-consuming pro smugglers, so it is indeed going to be effective, as will enforcing laws against hiring these criminal illegals and forcing Mexico to pay for the costs of those illegals to our courts and social services, including lost wages by Americans and the losses and expenses to the criminal activities of their citizens running amok here.
Is the Berlin Wall still standing? Is there some mental block that stands in the way of those wanting a wall so bad that they cannot see that the reasons other countries built a wall are not the same reasons extremists want a wall in the U.S.?
First, thanks for bringing up something I hadn't considered: that it looks bad, like the Berlin wall.
However, I consulted my cousin, who is a retired principal of a school in a border state and also who stays up to date on educational issues, which were patiently explained tome less than 2 weeks ago.
The reason I consulted was because I am not an educator, and I wondered what the impact was in this border state, which has millions of people in it.
It is far worse than I expected, and this is coming from one of the brightest, most experienced, and intellectually honest people I know.
Here's what I remember from the conversation:
Some years, a million children cross the border with their parents. The parents know their children are not getting education they need in Mexico, and the parents, while not refugees, prefer to bring them to America, which takes care of its people and doesn't kill, starve, or separate them into a contemptible class to be kept away from the upper echelons in Mexican society. They are willing to serve in the military and/or take menial jobs for the rest of their lives to educate their children in the USA.
The school-aged children brought here illegally and needing an education here is in the fourth grade. The child has no formal education before arriving here. What pressures schools the most is taking a 9-year-old child and cramming 3 years of school into a program that takes 6 years of learning. This forces the American school to try to teach more children faster than usual. That requires teachers with a phD to determine what is most important in the fields of Logic and math, history, bilingual communication and English, computer skills, music, art, sports, health and safety education, and all subjects grade schools need for competent standards.
The school-aged child brought here seldom speaks the English language. Teachers have to work on bilingual communications and parse time out to explain the same subject to two different groups. This is unfair in particular to children of foreign backgrounds from other countries besides Latin-speaking cultures. This takes time away from groups of American children who grow impatient if they're not learning something new, and parents are outraged to see lower test scores because not enough teacher time is there to teach their own children the basics of elementary school training. It also disables talented, gifted children from becoming the best that they can be.
The schools are not encouraged when these issues come up, and it robs existing elementary students here from having adequate teacher time.
It's not fair to American kids to take half the teacher's time on the 5 or 10% of illegal immigrants' children.
If you persist on allowing this educational fiasco to go on, you are going to have a society that is coming to regard illegal aliens as people cheating their children out of the taxes they have paid for a lifetime to devote the best the teacher has to a significant enough minority school population.
My educator of excellence cousin is dead-set against allowing this flood of aliens to destroy the educational opportunities of children who are already here,
Please reconsider what an open border is doing to the home team kids. Please let America's kids have their opportunities to learn unimpeded by constant interruptions while they are still kids. Don't let the do-gooders who get their kicks from the pet-rock fun of helping aliens supercede the job that needs to be done for the home team.
That's all I am asking. In my county, school taxes are already strangling not just parents but also seniors through sundry tax methods you may not be acquainted with. Seniors paying the taxes the law requires here will have to use up the savings they made for when they need nursing care facility issues their last few years of life.
You're causing senior citizens to lose their life's savings and have nothing to look forward to after they retire. Nothing they worked 40 or 50 years to have, except
Social Security that does not make ends meet in 95% of the households of senior citizens.
Wouldn't it just be easier to form a union with Mexico and its diverse states to share in the payment part? Or send Mexico a bill to educate its cast-offs through college?
This is nuts. You who are making up hate stories against the President on account of the wall that are massively unrepresentative of American kids, American parents, and American seniors.
I've never not shared when it comes to charity, and since I retired, it's all I do. I won't be able to when I lose my house and property because someday, my funds will all be gone from living on part of my savings, and having to fork over more than $15,000 every year to tax collectors in my county, state, and federal funds. I did the math. The school taxes I have to pay are 35% of the rest. I had to give up giving $100 a year to provide school necessities to the many impoverished-level children at the elementary schools across the street from my church, and cut out all other charitable giving to pay for the Schumer-Pelosi insistence that borders be wide open. That's just crazy.
