America’s ‘Berlin Wall’? (Excellent editorial on US/Mexico Border Fence)

PoliticalMavens.com ^ | March 16, 2007 | Paul Kengor

[2ndDivisionVet]

I tend to avoid the immigration debate, which, for various reasons that agitate some of my conservative friends, does not get me riled up. Nonetheless, in the context of this debate, the Mexican leadership continues to make an outrageous analogy, one that needs to be answered.

Both the previous Mexican president, Vicente Fox, and the new one, Felipe Calderon, have compared the U.S. decision to construct an additional 700 miles of border fencing—authorized in October by a Senate bill signed by President George W. Bush—to the decision to build the Berlin Wall. Fox called the move an “embarrassment for the United States,” and Calderon dubbed the decision “deplorable.”

Actually, the analogy to the Berlin Wall is embarrassing and deplorable. The words “Berlin Wall” and “U.S.-Mexico border fence” should not be used in the same sentence, especially by educated men like Fox and Calderon, who ought to know better.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Now we don't have the right to protect our border?

[paul51]

Fox called the move an “embarrassment for the United States,” and Calderon dubbed the decision “deplorable.”

One would think these clowns would be embarrassed to be leaders of a country whose population is dying to leave.

[Don Corleone]

Slight but meaningful difference.....we don't want to keep our people IN just illegal people OUT!

[thackney]

Yep, big difference between prison walls and protection of the home.

[Don W]

I have a LOT of trouble correlating the two. The Berlin Wall was constructed ONLY to keep formerly statist citizens from ESCAPING their socialist paradise.

The Bush border wall is only there to prevent those who want to break the laws of the nation they want to invade from accessing the nation of their affections.

I can't see any difference. (/sarcasm for those in Rio Linda).

[Don W]

I have a LOT of trouble correlating the two. The Berlin Wall was constructed ONLY to keep formerly statist citizens from ESCAPING their socialist paradise.

The Bush border wall is only there to prevent those who want to break the laws of the nation they want to invade from accessing the nation of their affections.

I can't see any difference. (/sarcasm for those in Rio Linda).

[Mr. Mojo]

Berlin Wall

The BW was designed to keep people enslaved within a communist prison; the proposed wall along the Mexican border will be designed to keep out criminals/terrorists/freeloaders. Quite a distinction. ...and one that's lost on many.

Fox called the move an “embarrassment for the United States,”

Fox has it exactly backwards. Want to see an embarrassment, Vicente? I suggest your pathetic nation look in the mirror.

[Temple Owl]

It would be a Berlin Wall if Mexico built the fence and then shot the people trying to escape.

[NonValueAdded]

Well, to them it would be the Berlin Wall because it would have the effect of keeping their people in and making them look to their own people as the East German Government. The real pressure that needs to be applied now is "don't make your people think you are the East Germans, reform your damned economy and keep your motivated workers home."

[M203M4]

[Bigh4u2]

I could go for the one surrounding the prison wall.

Only keep the razor wire leaning towards the Mexican side.

[Publius6961]

The most biting comment in this article is the comparison of the US wall and the Berlin wall:

If Mexico were proposing the wall, the comparison would be exact, rational and make sense; keeping their miserable people in to continue their misery.

Repeating a silly comparison does not make it rational.