One Tiny Little Difference

The snoozefest daily paper USA Today has a particularly stupid opinion piece today by Frances Lynch comparing the beefing up of the southern border fencing, such as it is, with razor wire to the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961*.

Behold:

There are those who would argue that refugees are indeed criminals if they attempt to enter a country illegally. Those who tried to escape East Berlin were undoubtedly violating East German law. But whether the appropriate penalty for those trying to leave East Berlin should have been serious injury or death seems questionable looking back.

You see, the Berlin Wall was constructed by the East Germans to stop citizens of East Germany leaving the workers paradise for more free, capitalist West Berlin, und so weiter.

Our border fencing is being constructed to keep non-citizens from illegally entering our country.

Keeping citizens in versus keeping criminal non-citizens out.

I know it's such a subtle difference, that the fact both were barriers to migration overwhelms the difference in purpose. But that difference was the reason we properly hated the Berlin Wall and wanted it gone (which it is). There is no similar reason to hate our border fence. Indeed, we should applaud our country's pragmatic efforts to stop people not American citizens from breaking our law as the very first thing they do in America.

I tend to think of illegal aliens as line jumpers, whom we generally hate; and unless we want criminal line jumpers to live here over law abiding legal immigrants who are willing to wait in an orderly fashion to become legal residents, stopping illegal immigration seems the opposite of keeping your unhappy citizens from leaving.

* Our crack, supremely competent, spy outfit, the CIA, had absolutely no idea the Berlin Wall was coming. None.