I’ve been to most of the major U.S.-Mexico border crossings.
I’ve walked from Laredo, Texas, to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, over the border bridge across the Rio Grande that traverses 1,200 miles of the border.
{mosads}I’ve followed the massive wall weaving up into the hills in Nogales, Mexico, bordering with Nogales, Arizona.
I’ve seen the border fence that juts out into the Pacific Ocean at the Tijuana- San Ysidro, California, border.
The former president of Mexico Vicente Fox told Donald Trump what he really thinks about the idea of making Mexico pay for the wall.
“I’m not going to pay for that f_ing wall,” he said in a recent interview.
Trump was outraged Fox cursed — ironic considering all the inappropriate and offensive language Trump uses.
But Trump made an interesting point about the border in the last Republican debate, and actually offered a detail to his plan.
He said that we only need to build around 1,000 miles of wall, because there are land barriers that take care of the rest along the almost 2,000-mile border. He’s talking about mountains, deserts and rivers.
What Trump isn’t saying is that we already have a wall or fence along many sections of the U.S.-Mexico – almost 700 miles.
The wall is a powerful symbol dividing the U.S. and Mexico.
I was in Juarez, Mexico, last week when Pope Francis celebrated mass just feet from the border and paid homage to the migrants who risk their lives crossing the border. More than 6,000 migrants have died along the border since 2000. He spoke of the global humanitarian crisis of mass migration and the need for compassion.
But what is all this wall talk really about?
Trump uses the wall as a weapon to tell Mexicans to stay out and with the warning that we will soon deport those that are already here. He plays on the fears of xenophobes who see a dark-skinned person and think “illegal” or hear someone speak Spanish and get angry they aren’t speaking English.
But the fact is that most Mexicans in the U.S. are not undocumented. Most Latinos in the U.S., around 65 percent, are native born.
And there are actually more Mexicans leaving the U.S. than coming into the U.S., according to Pew Hispanic. Mexicans account for only around half of the 11 million undocumented in the U.S.
The premise that immigration is a growing problem is a falsehood, one that Republican candidates like Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio exploit to win votes.
Let’s secure the border they say.
Of course we can’t have an open border. But President Obama has already worked to secure the border.
Under Obama, the number of border patrol agents has increased.
There are 3,000 additional Border Patrol agents along the Southwest Border. The border fencing, unmanned aircraft surveillance systems, and ground surveillance systems have more than doubled since 2008.
Let’s not forget that Obama has deported more undocumented – 2.5 million – than any president in modern history. This is an increase in deportations of 23 percent over President George W. Bush.
The frontrunners of Trump, Cruz and Rubio just want to deport them all, including the Dreamers, undocumented youth who came here as children.
None of the Republican candidates are talking about the economic contributions the undocumented make to the U.S. including $11.6 billion in annual state and local taxes.
It would take billions to build more miles of wall.
Maybe Trump’s next great idea will be to ask the undocumented to pay for the wall with the taxes that they pay.
Or will he follow Rubio’s advice?
“If he builds the wall the way he builds Trump Towers, he will be using illegal immigrant labor to do it,” Rubio said during the last debate.
No f_ing way.
Puente is an associate professor of journalism at Columbia College Chicago and a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. She also writes the Chicanisima blog.