Killer Bees Redux

Years ago, we were frequently burdened with reports of “killer bees” working their way north from Brazil. These “Africanized” bees, it was reported, swarmed at small provocations and chased people for long distances, inflicting serious injury and, occasionally, death. The fear was that killer bees would replace North America’s more docile honey bees, menacing the human population and collapsing the honey industry.

I haven’t heard much about the killer bees in recent years, so either this has already happened, and I have failed to notice it, or the reports were insufficiently descriptive of the real situation.

Or, perhaps the wall running along certain portions of our southern border slowed or even stopped the invasion of the killer bees.

“That is unlikely,” you say. “Bees would just fly over the wall.”

So, when you ask what is wrong with building a barricade to protect our country, I answer that it depends on whom or what you wish to protect it from.

A wall will probably keep out malevolently inclined rabbits and hares (if it extends a sufficient distance below ground), but it will not stop any force of nature, animate or inanimate, that is likely to threaten the wellbeing of Americans, even those living and working near the border.

The sort of wall proposed by our intrepid Mr. Trump will, perhaps deter some foot traffic across our southern border: the traffic made up of very poor people with few options. But is there any chance that it will foil the machinations of drug cartels that are better financed than many countries? I think they might take a page from the killer bees’ book and fly over the wall.

Well, what about the political unrest in Venezuela and elsewhere? Isn’t it just prudent to fortify against invasion from a chaotic South just as we did against an aggressive Soviet Union in Europe after WWII?

Perhaps, but then our fortifications consisted of tank divisions and a threat to place neutron bombs in Europe. Mr. Trump’s proposed “slats” might stop a motorized invasion of the kind seen in a Mad Max film, but they would not stand long against even WWII-vintage tanks.

What is wrong with barricading the southern border in the way that Mr. Trump proposes is the same thing that was wrong with “No Irish Need Apply” signs that appeared in store windows a little over a century ago. It does not seriously address any situation that needs remedying; they simply signal that people like us don’t want people like you around here.

I, for one, do not wish to send that signal. The United States is a country of laws, and surely it needs to have laws governing who can and who cannot be a citizen or enter its territory. If the current laws are unsatisfactory, then we should change them. If they are satisfactory, then we should enforce them.

But this “barricading” of the southern border is no different from posting signs saying, “Were are just fine as we are. You should just stay where you are.”

Now, if Mr. Trump were to propose barricading the northern border as well, and moving the Statue of Liberty from New York Harbor to Mar-A-Lago, where the poor, the tired, and the huddled masses are welcome to bus tables and mow putting greens, then I would at least think he was a man of integrity. But he is not such a man; the statue looks quite grand where it currently stands; and the mighty St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes do a pretty good job of keeping the Canadians where they are. Or, as the Canadians might have it, keeping the Americans where they are.