6/7/2016 - Phyllis Schlafly Townhall.com
The
promise to build a wall along America's southern border with Mexico has carried
Donald Trump to his remarkable victory in the Republican primaries for
president. Now it's time to put that promise into the official Republican Party
Platform.
Many would be surprised to learn that a border
security fence or wall was not already in the Republican platform. After all,
President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act, which Congress passed in
2006 with the support of many Democrats, including then-Senators Barack Obama
and Hillary Clinton.
In the 10 years since Bush signed that law in a
staged photo-op, the government has actually built only 36 miles of secure
double fencing instead of the 700 miles authorized by that bipartisan,
high-profile law. As a result, our southern border is penetrated daily by wave
after wave of drug smuggling, human trafficking, people with incurable or
infectious diseases such as the Zika virus, and even Muslims and Chinese people
who somehow made their way to Mexico.
Business lobbyists and the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, who hold too much influence in the Republican Party, oppose a wall
because it would interfere with their continued exploitation of cheap foreign
labor at the expense of American workers. In addition to tolerating the flow of
illegal labor, the Chamber wants to expand every category of visas for foreign
workers, both skilled and unskilled.
According to Politico, Republican power brokers
have convened "as many as 10 closed-door huddles with business lobbyists
to discuss the party's platform." Attendees were warned not to discuss
details with the press, but you can bet that building a wall was not on their
agenda.
The big-business lobbyists also expressed alarm at
Trump's promise to "discourage companies from moving jobs outside the
United States." One participant said his colleagues are "pretty much
aghast" at Trump's proposals to protect Americans against rampant cheating
by our so-called "trading partners."
House Speaker Paul Ryan, meanwhile, has been
developing his own agenda for Republicans in an effort to compete with Trump's.
Under the slogan "A Better Way," Ryan's proposals include old
chestnuts like cutting taxes, entitlements and regulations, but nothing about
limiting immigration or the hemorrhage of jobs to foreign countries.
The Ryan agenda is basically the same as what Jeb
Bush and 15 other failed presidential candidates campaigned on, but those ideas
obviously didn't sell to the Republican electorate. The voters have spoken, and
the future of the Republican Party starts with a wall along our southern
border.
Even some members of the Republican National
Committee are resisting the wall as a political statement that belongs in the
party platform. One RNC member called the wall "a symbolic thing"
rather than "a physical thing," while another member said the border
wall is not to be taken "literally" because "it is a
metaphor."
The two RNC members are right that the border wall
would be a powerful symbol, but only if and when it is actually built. Once
completed, the wall on our southern border would stand as a
"metaphor" for the fact that coming to America requires the
invitation and permission of the American citizens who are already here.
The 2012 platform has many good provisions,
including opposition to "any form of amnesty" and support for states
using their authority to enforce federal immigration laws. But building a wall
is now the foundation of Republican immigration policy -- and yes, Mexico will
pay for the wall.
Yet the Chamber of Commerce calls it a
"myth" that "building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and
deporting all undocumented immigrants from the United States, would enhance
national security." The Chamber's analysis asserts that a border security
wall would cost between $15 and $25 billion to build, and not even $1 billion
to maintain, but those are small sums compared to the real costs of illegal
immigration.
The federal, state, and local costs of criminal
justice to process and incarcerate criminal aliens is at least $15 billion a
year, not to mention the harm caused by those crimes, such as horrific crashes
that have occurred when smugglers drive the wrong way on freeways at night with
their headlights turned off. Even deportation is not as expensive as opponents
of border security pretend.
A wall along the border would reduce illegal
immigration and cause real wages to increase for average American workers for
the first time in more than a decade. That may not be something the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce wants for big business, but it's something that would
attract American workers to vote Republican.
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