Building a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border does not seem as though it is what the United States should be doing to try to solve the immigration problem. Mexican immigrants are so eager and determined to get into the U.S. that they will do very dangerous things to try to get in, and building a wall will not stop this, it only heighten the danger of their journeys. One way that they would be able to escape the wall would be by building tunnels, a method that is already in use. An article on GlobalSecurity.org states that, “There are 40 such tunnels that have been discovered since 9/11, and the great bulk of them are on the southern border”. This shows that Mexicans have already been building tunnels, are presumably there still are many tunnels that have not been discovered. Coming to the United States has been a dangerous journey for many immigrant groups throughout history, and parallels can be drawn between Mexican immigration and Cuban immigration. Many Cubans have been coming to the United States to flee the Castro regime, and many of their journeys are extremely dangerous; such as using inner tubes or small rafts and canoes to reach American soil (pictures can be seen here: http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba-immigration.htm). The famous story of Elian Gonzalez in 2000 illustrates this danger. Gonzalez was seven years old when he traveled with his mother and other Cubans to America on an inner tube. The journey was so dangerous that his mother and many others died, however Gonzalez safely made it to America. There was then a heated custody battle over whether he should stay in America with relatives or go back to Cuba to live with his father, and although this is insignificant to this topic the story does illustrate how dangerous the journey can be and the chaos that can occur because of it. There are many similar stories of Mexican immigrants and the danger of their journeys, and building a fence will just exacerbate the danger, not lessen the amount of immigrants coming here.
Another reason against building a wall is simply the catastrophic cost to build it. The article on GlobalSecurity.org states that, “Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has said a wall running the length of a border would cost too much. A 2,000 mile state-of-the-art border fence has been estimated to cost between four and eight billion dollars”. Is this really where Americans’ tax dollars should be going? To build a wall that will cost billions of dollars and is unlikely to be successful in stopping Mexican immigration? Maybe instead we should use some of the money that would go to building the wall to aid Mexico so that it can increase workers’ wages. Then fewer Mexicans will want to come to the United States. This would cost the U.S. a lot of money, however in the long run it would be a lot more successful and beneficial to the U.S. than building a wall. Many advocates for this plan hope that the North American Free Trade Agreement will also help to aid Mexico by increasing trade between the United States and Mexico. Overall, it seems that to solve the immigration problem we should be looking at the root of the problem, which is why Mexicans are leaving Mexico to come to the U.S. and try to decrease immigration by helping Mexico, rather than building a wall which would probably not be successful in stopping Mexicans from coming in.

Thanks for the comment, Clara! I agree -- building a fence is costly and not worth it in the long run.

The idea of a huge wall separating two groups of people is disgusting to me. The US is going to put millions and millions of tax payer’s money into building a huge ugly wall that will not stop illegal immigration but just make it harder for people to immigrate illegally. The US government is trying to make our country into a blocked off country from the rest of the world which is something we need less of. We are pushing people away when our whole world needs unification. The money for the wall could be used for many other things to make the illegal immigrants in our country more pert of our community. We could provide these people who are here doing a lot of jobs Americans don’t want to do with health care and education. We need to make the immigration problem better by helping illegal immigrants not just shutting off all of Latin America’s immigration to the US. When the Secure Fence Act was passed it was a law many knew would throw millions of dollars away to pointless security that will not change much for the lives of people in our country but just put a burden on the people of other countries. What we need are laws unlike the Secure Fence Act and older laws like Proposition 187, that got rid of all the funding to help the immigrants live in the US. Health care and other things that the people of the US are given, was taken from the illegal immigrants. We have civil rights in the US, which allow us to have the things we need. By us not allowing others to be able to use the things promised is greedy and morally wrong. Ever since 1921 we have been throwing money at laws that sound good and no one can enforce like the National Origins Act. It was a act passed to filter out immigrants and it worked somewhat but only made it harder, but not impossible. All of these acts sound good then never work and people need to realize that and make the quality of life better for everyone, not just creating a harder environment for the immigrants to enter and live. We have a flawed immigration system that a wall will not fix. We need people to understand that the illegal immigrants came here to make a better life for them selves and we need to respect that and help them make the best of there new lives. All we have been doing is forcing them to work under minimum wage jobs, with horrible hours and conditions, live in bad areas, and then people complain when illegal immigrants want rights and ask for just a little but more. We are treating them badly for no reason they come here to live the American dream and we strip them of any hope, and then still try and justify our anger at them.