The most recent government shutdown -the longest in US history at 35 days- was caused by the major disagreement between Republicans and Democrats on the funding of the Trump’s Border Wall. The big supposed wall at the edge of our southern border was one of the biggest promises made by Trump during his 2016 Presidential Campaign. The slogan, “Build that Wall” would loudly chant at almost every one of his political rallies.

Now, in 2019, Trump has come up with a new slogan in hopes that the American people will pressure their respective congressmen into giving financial backing for the wall. The new slogan reads, “Build the Wall and Crime Will Fall,” but will it?

This new promotion by Trump for his wall stays true to his belief that weak border security and illegal immigration are the root of most of America’s problems. His supporters and Republican media paint the picture of citizens staying awake at night fearing that a scary, illegal immigrant will come into their houses, steal their jobs and possibly their life. Based on countless studies, this is further from the truth as it is obvious Trump uses illegal immigration as an scapegoat much like his much compared to radical leader, Adolf Hitler, who used Jews as a way to concentrate responsibility to just one group.

In February 2018, the Cato Institute published a study in which they conclude that during 2015 in Texas, a state with one of the highest illegal immigrant populations, natural born citizens were more likely to be the cause of a crime than an illegal or legal immigrant. The study goes deeper by explaining, “Illegal immigrants made up about 6.4 percent of the Texas population in 2015, but only accounted for 5.9 percent of all homicide convictions. Legal immigrants made up 10.6 percent of the Texas population but accounted for only 3.8 percent of homicide convictions. Native-born Americans made up 83 percent of the Texas population but accounted for 90.3 percent of all homicide convictions.”  

The problem of drug trafficking is another issue Trump and his supporters claim the wall could fix, but it’s possibly one of their most embarrassing mistakes. The DEA’s 2018 National Drug Threat Assessment reads most drugs such as heroin aren’t smuggled through the vacant dessert, but through legal points of entry. It is there where they are mixed in with legal goods to finally enter the US and distribute it across the country. Money that Trump wants to use for the wall could be used for giving border security officials further tools and resources to locate and confiscate these illegal substances when they are being smuggled. Drugs are being snuck in right under our noses, not behind our backs. Even if a wall on the southern border were to become so successful as to stop all drug trafficking through that area, drug traffickers will and have used other ways since most of the coke smuggled into the US during the 1980’s was through Florida via plane.  

Building a wall has constantly been proven to do nothing but take money away from where it can actually be useful. A major solution to illegal immigration is improving and optimizing the system in which immigrants legally enter the United States and give them the tools to be successful. If the government is able to organize the process in such a way that entering legally is easier than coming illegally, that could be a way to weed out the bad apples from the good.     

Even as a left leaning immigrant, I see and understand the need for Americans to feel secure that their country is protected from potential outside dangers, but the wall Trump has been campaigning is an expensive and constantly debunked solution that I believe is just a way for our  President to put his horrendous name into something else, except this time he doesn’t have to pay for it.