If You Build It ... They Will Go Around It: The Insanity of a Border Fence Peter Costantini - CityWatch
go to original August 2, 2013

Puzzled by the immigration debate in the United States? Remember the Maginot Line.

That formidable French system of fortifications was built in the 1930s by André Maginot, the French minister of war, to guard against invasion from the east. Unfortunately, the Nazi blitzkrieg did an end run around it and overran France in six weeks.

Poor Maginot has become shorthand for “fighting the last war”. But at least he was trying to confront an existential and imminent threat.

The dreaded invasion of “illegal aliens”, against which our own Maginots have built hundreds of miles of border walls, called out the National Guard and scrambled the drones, actually peaked in 2000 and has long since been over.

Since the onset of the Great Recession, slightly more Mexicans have gone home to Mexico than have come here, and currently net migration appears to be near zero. The total population of undocumented immigrants is down about eight percent from its 2007 peak.

And ultimately, rather than devastation, the influx has brought modest but widespread benefits to our economy and society.

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