Due to President Trump’s current political stance regarding the border with Mexico, there is a lot of talk about expanding a barrier between the two countries. However, do such barriers or walls really work all that well? In 1961, a wall was built by East German authorities between East Berlin and West Berlin. The wall was to prevent East Germans from fleeing East Germany to enter West Germany via West Berlin. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the original wall, built of barbed wire and cinder blocks, was subsequently replaced by a series of concrete walls (up to 15 feet [5 metres] high) that were topped with barbed wire and guarded with watchtowers, gun emplacements, and mines. By the 1980s that system of walls, electrified fences, and fortifications extended 28 miles (45 km) through Berlin, dividing the two parts of the city, and extended a further 75 miles (120 km) around West Berlin, separating it from the rest of East Germany.
However, despite this massive fortification, over 5,000 East Germans managed to cross the Berlin Wall (by various means) and reach West Berlin safely. Finally, in 1989 the East German government opened the country’s borders with West Germany (including West Berlin). The openings were made in the Berlin Wall through which East Germans could travel freely to the West. During the Cold War, the wall had become a symbol of state oppression and an attempt to prevent thousands of desperate people from seeking freedom in the West, many at real risks to their lives and certain imprisonment in East Germany if captured.
Extending a wall between the U.S. and Mexico would also become a symbol of one country’s oppressive policies to deny refuge to desperate men, women and children fleeing for their lives. To arbitrarily deny all refugees the possibility of safe haven by erecting a wall is morally wrong in itself. To think that a wall will stem the tide of those seeking a better life for themselves and their families is not a practical solution, as evidenced by the Berlin Wall. Just as the Berlin Wall had ceased to function as a political barrier between East and West Germany, so would a physical border wall with Mexico never adequately and humanely deal with the current influx of refugees.
Surely, the U.S. administration can come up with more humane alternatives and viable policy options to help these people either in their countries or while in the process of desperate flight. Monies expended on the construction of a wall expansion could better be spent on improving the conditions faced by potential refugees in their countries of origin.
FROLITICKS 