© 2017 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. Our nation has been talking about
the problem of immigration into our country involving people without legal
status for decades. No one has done anything about it. Much of the talk has focused
on the country of Mexico since many people coming into our country without
legal status come from Mexico. Many, not all.
As I said in last week’s column, the
politicians for and against immigration solutions have been and are mainly using
the controversy for their own fundraising. Politicians on both sides don’t want
resolution of immigration issues because they themselves are making so much
money fundraising on the fears.
For all these years, what we know is
that many people from other countries are bypassing our legal immigration
processes. Over the years one of the plans is to build a wall. And it would
appear a doer rather than just a talker, President Donald Trump, is set to build
a wall between our country and Mexico.
Don’t do it President Trump, I have
a better plan. The wall is a thumb in the eye of Mexico. Plus, we are building
a wall with no utility other than stopping people entering our country outside
of legal processes.
It won’t work. China found that
after building the more than five-thousand-mile Great Wall of China. It didn’t
work because invaders just bribed the Chinese guards to go through the wall
when they wanted. Sounds like the problem Americans have with Drug Cartels
bribing our authorities.
I do not like win-loss political solutions.
A wall does nothing for our country other than provide jobs building it and
bribes for our authorities from Cartel members to get past the wall.
There is another way to spend that
money and spend it on a better win-win solution. Rather than just build a wall
on the border, build a fifteen-foot raised six-lane super-freeway along with an
easement on our side for two-way railroad track construction, multiple pipelines,
powerlines and cellphone towers.
The cost of just building a wall is similar
to building a fifteen-foot-high super-freeway which would act as a wall. We get
the benefit of an easement on our side. My friend, former State Senator Lee
Cotter, a civil engineer, first mention this to me a couple weeks ago. I really
like the idea.
One of the great improvements of our
time is super-freeways. President Dwight Eisenhower was an Army Lieutenant-Colonel
in 1919 when he was joined a convoy of equipment and men from the nation’s Capital
to San Francisco. It took the eighty-vehicle convoy sixty-two days averaging a rate
of six miles per hour.
He vowed that if he was ever in
charge, he would build superhighways. At the time, Germany was doing so with
its Autobahn. Eisenhower was lifted out of obscurity at the start of WWII to
become the Supreme Commander of the military and then the 34th President of the
United States.
Now coast to coast travel on
freeways is only a few days. So why not put another path across the Southern
Border which would allow better transportation along with more access to our
country’s markets for Mexico and to Mexico’s markets for our country.
Queen Elizabeth II said, “At its
heart, engineering is about using science to find creative, practical
solutions.” I agree, engineering solutions are much better to use than political
solutions. Our nation, using engineering sent people to the moon and returned
them safely. While politician President John Kennedy started the quest, it was
engineers that achieved that mission.
Just having a wall out in the middle
of the area with nothing around it will still require constant monitoring which
would also be what the freeway would require. A fifteen-foot rise would make it
harder to just walk across the border, but it would not be impossible. Having
traffic and regular rest stops would make it attractive to our citizens and
would be heavily monitored for anyone trying to cross without authorization.
Let us build something useful to use
on both sides of our southern border while still being a barrier to those who
would enter our country without legal status. It is an engineering solution
rather than a political solution. I like win-win solutions.
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