The governor hopes by merely building a big wall he'll block a far Bigger problem
HOUSTON, Texas — “I will announce next week the plan for the state of Texas to begin building the border wall,” Gov. Abbott said Thursday, at a border security summit in Del Rio. As for how the Republican governor hopes to pull off this spectacular project, who knows.
Unlike the previous Trump administration, which primarily ignored the federal environmental regulations, Abbott can't turn such a deaf ear at the state level. Not to mention, there's a huge chunk of private land the state would have to fork over to pull off this "Great Wall of Texas."
Most of all, Abbott's grand plans include constructing not only detention centers for Texas but also calls for allocating $1 billion of the state’s budget towards border security. Sure, the plan sounds workable on paper but misses the point in reality.
And here's why.
No wall, no matter how big, can solve the real border issue
When Jack Ewing called "the United States the richest country in the world," he just as well had added "richest country in history," too. Quite simply: America is the modern-day Roman Empire! And here's where the true issue lands.
In all of history, the world's never encountered the richest country and a Third World country being next-door neighbors. So closely linked are Mexico and America, in fact, Texas was originally Mexico.
Think about that for a second. ...
When the location is factored in with the wide economic gap between the two neighboring nations, does Abbott really think building a wall is the solution?
Remember, while standing on the other side of the "fence," the undocumented immigrants will still spot us Americans living in the land "overflowed with milk and honey." And given that in 2018 it was estimated 42% of the Mexican population lived in poverty, does Abbott actually believe some wall can silence that insatiable hunger for a better life?
In Chiapas, Mexico, a whopping 76.4 percent of the residents live in poverty, with a third of the residents living in extreme poverty.
In short, until the vast wealth disparity between the world's richest nation and one of its poorest is solved, no amount of building big walls will solve the even Bigger issue.
The mere mention of building a wall violates common sense
An old professor once told us that "in life, common sense will take you further than any other trait. And so, common sense is the ultimate philosophy!"
Musk, Zuckerberg and the richest 1% in the world have long known:
Universal basic income ensures not only Americans but also our next-door neighbors have enough for basic necessities. And only then, when such conditions are met, can the proverb "good fences make good neighbors" take effect.
President Biden, in his promise to halt the so-called border wall construction, shows himself to have more common sense, in this regard, than his counterparts. In fact, Biden's administration intends to redirect the "$2.2 billion previously allocated for former President Donald Trump's border wall to military projects."
Perhaps the president understands that, at the end of the day, no wall . . . no fence . . . no matter how tall and wide will ever stop a mother from striving to make a better life for her baby. No wall can ever discourage a father from trying to give his family a slice of the American Pie.
Perhaps Abbott forgets this: because we're all human, can anything human ever really be "alien" to us?
Building some border wall merely sets the stage for tragic endings! After all, when the human heart overflows, such desperation will surely spill over to throwing caution to the wind. Do we really want to witness fellow humans crashing head-first into some wall, not to mention the potentially endless stream of innocent lives lost?
No wonder human rights and immigration advocacy groups are up in arms about Abbott's wall proposal. After all, the governor's plan misses the main point: no matter how big the wall, it'll never solve the far Bigger problem.