California Conservative

That is the probing question recently posed by well-known conservative journalist and author, William F. Buckley, Jr.

Mr. Buckley weighs in on the current issue of immigration by comparing Mexico to East Germany in the late 1950s, drawing a compelling parallel between the political, economic, and social conditions.

Because so many East Germans were leaving for the promise of better opportunity in the West, it came to a dramatic tipping point. Buckley writes:

“East German leader Walter Ulbricht reported to the Kremlin that at the rate doctors and engineers were leaving East Germany, in 10 years if you needed a doctor you’d find none such left, let alone an engineer to build a bridge. We are going to close down Berlin, Ulbricht told Khrushchev, and the mighty Soviet army has to stand by us or the whole Soviet East European establishment is going to break down.

What happened was the Berlin wall.”

In the case of America, of course, the opposite is true. We are receiving the steady exodus coming from across the border and supporting the growing costs of absorbtion, while Mexico makes no effort to stem their outflow. In fact, financial interests are more inclined to encourage it.

Given this situation, and recognizing the continued inability of our elected leaders to take meaningful action, Buckley asserts:

If the border between Mexico and the United States were designed like the border between East and West Berlin, an effort could feasibly be made to block the apex into which the human traffic consolidated.

The idea of a 2,000-mile wall is not abandoned, because no escape from the current intolerable situation is officially abandoned. How long would it take? If we hired Israeli wall makers to go to work, or show us how to do it? Ex-Soviet wall builders could surely be found who are as young as 65 years old, and they certainly are looking for work.

The concept of a wall is disagreeable, but critical questions are now crystallizing. Can the United States govern its own borders?

As of today, the answer would be resoundingly “No.” By innumerable accounts, we are failing miserably at controlling U.S. immigration, and the primary consequences are both financial and national security risks. Michelle Malkin offers an excellent blog dedicated to examining the latest news.

From the recent stories about The Minuteman Project, a civilian group volunteering their time to patrol the Arizona/Mexican border, to the growing unrest among the general public because politicians, at all levels, are ignoring the will of the voters, something has got to be done. And without continued delay. Playing politics has gotten us nowhere.

California is certainly no stranger to the impact that illegal immigration has on a state. The costs are very real. Ignoring the problem is not an option. We support the legitimate efforts of immigration reform. Action must be taken.

Or as Buckley concludes:

There is a great yearning across the land to demonstrate that we are master of our own house. As things are going, we are not. The immigration wave appears uncontainable, and we cannot generate the sentiment required to do the kind of thing the East Germans did. All of which argues that effective reduction in illegal immigration is not going to happen.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 8th, 2005 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Foreign Policy, Immigration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.