“...and it’s largest failure was when invaders came through the gate!”

Thank you for helping make my point. Unusual for you to be rational, but I accept this instance.

On the Border, Little Enthusiasm for a Wall: ‘We Have Other Problems That Need Fixing’

By SIMON ROMERO, MANNY FERNANDEZ, JOSE A. DEL REAL and AZAM AHMED JAN. 8, 2019


COLUMBUS, N.M. — Just minutes from the border in rural New Mexico, the Borderland Cafe in the village of Columbus serves burritos and pizza to local residents, Border Patrol agents and visitors from other parts of the country seeking a glimpse of life on the frontier. The motto painted on the wall proclaims “Life is good in the Borderland.”

“This is the sleepiest little town you could think of,” said Adriana Zizumbo, 31, who was raised in Columbus and owns the cafe with her husband. “The only crisis we’re facing here is a shortage of labor. Fewer people cross the border to work than before, and Americans don’t want to get their hands dirty doing hard work.”
President Trump has shut down part of the government over border security and his plan to build a wall along the border with Mexico, and in a prime-time speech on Tuesday night he painted a bleak picture of life in towns like Columbus.

He said border residents were suffering through a “humanitarian crisis,” and he described a landscape scarred by violence and prowled by “vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs.” But that is not how Ms. Zizumbo sees it. People in Columbus, she said, opposed the idea of a wall by about a “90-to-10 margin.”
“Enough about the wall already,” she said. “We have other problems here that need fixing.”

Extending nearly 2,000 miles from southern Texas to a fence jutting out into the Pacific Ocean in San Diego, America’s border with Mexico is as long and as varied as the terrain. Remote spots in the desert like Columbus, a town of 1,600 people about 80 miles west of El Paso, are sleepily tranquil. In cities like El Paso and San Diego, the growing number of migrant families pushing for entry to the United States has generated crowds and controversy, with migrants packed into detention centers and bus stations, and clashes at the fences between rock-throwing immigrants and federal agents.

In anticipation of the president’s speech, The New York Times sent correspondents to the Mexico side of the border and to the four states on the United States side — California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas — and found few who shared the president’s sense of alarm.

Many said there was indeed a humanitarian crisis unfolding, but they blamed the Trump administration for worsening it with a series of policies aimed at deterring Central American migrants from making the journey. Those policies, many of which have been blocked by legal challenges, have failed to stop the flood of migrants. But they have succeeded in escalating tensions, overwhelming volunteer shelters and putting those seeking asylum from violence at renewed risk of health threats and other problems once they arrive in the United States.

The border has long been more than a barrier or a headline. It is the setting of a uniquely American story, a binational place of contradictions and commerce. One afternoon a few months ago, a Latino teenager walked through the bus station in the South Texas city of McAllen, a transit hub where hundreds of apprehended immigrants are dropped off daily by the authorities. The boy was not fresh from detention. He was a native Texan. He was visiting a relative and wore a black T-shirt correcting any misconceptions about his identity. It read “Relax Trump, I’m legal.”

That was the vibe along many parts of the border on Tuesday, ahead of Mr. Trump’s speech.

A cattle rancher in southern Arizona said he had traveled to Mexico a day earlier, and he saw no emergency. The lines were long — officials have shut down the number of ways people there can cross — but there were no signs of conflict or people pressing to get in.

“There is no border problem, except for ones we are causing,” said the rancher, who said he had not had any problems with illegal border crossers on his property and who asked not to be identified out of fear of retribution from strident supporters of Mr. Trump’s planned border wall. “There’s no need for a bigger wall. There is not a border crisis down here.”

Some of the worsening problems, some city officials have said, are a result of the federal government’s own management of the border. In El Paso and other cities in California and Arizona, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has in recent weeks released thousands of immigrants unannounced onto city streets, forcing city officials and migrant shelter operators to scramble to accommodate them.

“They were just being dropped off with nothing — no money, nothing,” said Kevin Malone, one of the founders of the San Diego Rapid Response Network, which has been dealing more frequently with unannounced releases. “They’re setting people up for failure every step along the way. This is a contrived emergency. They don’t have to be doing it like this.”

From 2014 to 2017, local municipalities in South Texas had to spend $873,000 on immigrant relief efforts, expanding staffing, securing migrant assistance centers and maintaining restrooms, generators and sleeping quarters.

“Then we get blasted for being sanctuary cities — get real,” said Jim Darling, the mayor of McAllen. “It’s not our fault. The feds are the ones dropping them off. What are we supposed to do?”

Some of those along the border, to be sure, believe the government should be not rushing to accommodate new migrants but fortifying to keep them out. James Johnson, a prominent farmer in Columbus, said he had voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 and continues to support the president, including his proposal for a wall.

“Listen, we need security and a wall will provide that security,” said Mr. Johnson, 43, whose family-owned onion and chile farm sits along a stretch of the border. “I’m 100 percent for the wall. Trump is bold in pushing for it.”

For a look at those whom Mr. Trump’s supporters would like to keep out, one needed only to take a short drive across the border from southern Texas to the Mexican town of Matamoros, where hundreds of migrants were biding their time on Tuesday, waiting to cross into the United States and apply for asylum.
A porous tarp at their makeshift camp shielded them from the sun and, for the most part, the rain.
A Honduran mother, Iris Patricia Oseguera, 51, sat in slightly better conditions, at a nearby shelter, with her 10-year-old son. Having been turned back from the international bridge crossing by Mexican authorities when she tried to enter the United States, she said the two of them had been told to find permanent housing soon.

“We have nowhere to go,” Ms. Oseguera said, adding that she and her son could not return to Honduras because of the worsening gang violence there. If forced to leave the shelter, she said, she wasn’t sure where she would go. “We don’t even have money to eat. How am I going to pay for a house?”
At the migrant camp, a group of American volunteers was giving away bags of fruit and bottles of water.
One of them was Cyndie Rathburn, the mayor of the Texas town of Rancho Viejo, home to what she described as a large population of conservative Trump supporters. “This is not a national security crisis,” she said as she purchased a bag of fruit from a local vendor. “President Trump has a flair for hyperbole and rhetoric.”

Back at the Borderland Cafe in New Mexico, Ms. Zizumbo’s husband, Lawrence Haddad, keeps a pistol underneath the cash register in case something happens. He hasn’t had to use it.

“Nothing much happens, and that’s the way people like it,” said Mr. Haddad, 32.

Still, quiet Columbus hasn’t escaped the political turmoil over border policy: Ahead of the midterm elections in November, self-described militia members from around the country descended on the town to prepare for the arrival of a caravan of Central American migrants, then making its way up through Mexico.

“Honestly, these guys were kind of absurd, wearing camo and looking at their maps,” Ms. Zizumbo said. “They accomplished nothing, and now they’re gone. Maybe they’ll be back after Trump talks.”
Hours ahead of Mr. Trump’s address on Tuesday, Randy Shaw, 71, was outside the Borderland Cafe. He held a sign that read “Stop truth decay: Dump Trump.”

Mr. Shaw is from Wyoming, but spends winters in Columbus. “This whole crisis thing is Trump’s creation,” he said. “Don’t let him fool you.”

Simon Romero reported from Columbus, N.M.; Manny Fernandez from Houston; Jose A. Del Real from San Diego; and Azam Ahmed from Matamoros, Mexico. Ford Burkhart contributed reporting from Nogales, Ariz., and Mitchell Ferman from McAllen, Tex

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/us/border-wall-crisis-mexico-usa.html

You didn’t address me, but I’ll answer.

What is better than the wall is addressing the basis of the issue, which is uncontrolled terror in migrant’s home countries.

As long as citizens live in terror in Central America, they will move heaven and earth to go someplace better, and that is usually the USA.

If we’re going to fix the problem, fighting terror is Central America is the solution.

Everything else is mindless busywork, actually busy-won’t-work, leading to dollars wasted, lives lost, perpetual terror, and the possibility that terror will emigrate to the US.

Childish,

And

Boring.

Do you understand that crossings are at a 45 year low?

Do you understand that most ‘illegals’ FLY into this country?

Do you understand the Great Walls often—usually—Fail?

And that they fail in more ways than one.

The Israeli wall, touted as a great success, has guaranteed perpetual war since the day it was built.

More of the same, insecurity and BS!

This is as sophisticated as you get?

Childish,

And

Boring.

Looks to me that you’ve been reading me, but you haven’t been thinking—the Maginot Line was one of History’s GREAT FAILURES—a very poor example for you to assert, a very good one for me to point out.

I hope trump’s wall is a greater success than your history or your insight.

Just had to get in there, didn’t you?? Can’t stand the thought that no one is paying attention to you.

Do you every have a contribution to make, or do you offer BS as your strong suit?

You show a great capacity for embarrassment, or ignorance of it.

Of course the suggestion was the full 2,000 miles—are you lying as you accuse others of or merely critically misinformed?

And I have supplied you desired case that The Great Wall Of China failed, the Israeli wall kept war alive and active each and every day since it was built, The Berlin Wall was Russia’s shame and a beacon to the free world, The Great Wall of Athens failed the worlds most civilized nation, Hadrian’s didn’t save Rome from the barbarians, and on and on.

This boondoggle to the base will enrich a world of trump’s cronies—including, no doubt, trump himself, The Corruption King!—and cause only minor inconvenience to the ‘illegals,’ as they tunnel under it (or use tunnel already in place) sail around it Vacation style, or Fly Over it in Comfort and Splendor.

Ah, Failure, Additional Failure, then Repeated Failure, chasing Phantoms and Shadows in Run-From-Terror-and-Save-Your-Family-in-America game of Hide and Seek.

The Wall, vulnerable to a common hand saw, is not a barrier at all, but a ruse to ignite the passion of ‘the base,’ to keep then aroused and vigilant in the face of inevitable impeachment, to keep rabble in the streets, adrenalin in full flow, and the illlusion of legitimacy alive and in full affront to reason and the nation.

Ah, the empty charge, the desperate search to avoid reality, the dishonest man’s motto and the failure’s excuse...the empty charge of lying to cover the instance of failure.

The Wall: the thing that never keeps intruders out, the thing gone under, gone over, or gone around—the thing oblivious to the fact that most ‘illegals’ FLY into this country, and illegal drugs cross the border At The Checkpoints—and we stop only 10% of them.

But we call all of these ‘lies’ on our way to purchase our new Ford Edsel.

The Statue of Liberty blushes, and donald trump is a dishonest, lying sumbitch.

Can you read?

Walls have failed for a thousand years.

And if they work temporarily, they create other issues, as in Israel and Berlin.

The Great Wall of China—so big it can be seen from outer space—failed.

How about Jericho?

How about Hadrian’s Wall?

Their failures are legion and legend.

Again you run away....

Let’s try it and find out: name a ‘fact’ that I got wrong, be specific. And lets see whether it hurts one of us, and see which one suffers.

Why would you expect me to learn that, when you haven’t learned it.

If you see a lie, call me on it.

Be specific.

Don’t compound the situation with 400 year old definitions of “liberal.”