Trump's wall

I have been reading about the border between the US and Mexico in the latest number of the NYRB (Vol.LXVI, No.1), in particular about the unsavoury business of chasing down would be migrants - men, women and children - in the more or less deserted deserts and scrub lands which appear to make up a good part of that border. And their subsequent processing.

So we have a large poor region and a large rich region with a long land boundary between them. There are always going to be people who are going to try to get from the one to the other, some of whom will go to considerable lengths and take considerable risks. Freedom of movement of labour - as within the European Community or within the US itself - is not an option and there has to be control.

Now a wall might be a very expensive blot on the landscape and it might well not be relevant to stopping irregular crossings through regular crossing points or to stopping irregular staying on after regular crossing - but it would more or less put an end to said unsavoury business. No more Humvees chasing down distraught women and children in the deserts, in the middle of the night.

As a country with no relevant land borders we can afford to be nice about these things, but maybe we could show a bit more understanding for those who do have such land borders or who are otherwise a lot closer to the action than we are. While remaining uneasy about a country which is making a great deal of fuss about migrants while, at the same time, getting those migrants to do a lot of low paid work, a lot of it unpleasant, that citizens do not want. Also about a country whose appetite for recreational drugs is in some part responsible for the poverty and violence which is driving the migrants north.