Steven Metz
American politics today is consumed by a debate over the security of the nation’s long southern border with Mexico, driven by President Donald Trump’s determination to build a barrier wall along its full length. While Trump has hammered on about this idea since announcing his presidential campaign in 2015, he did not push Congress on it during the first two years of his administration, when his Republican Party controlled both chambers of Congress. Only last month, with control of the House of Representatives about to shift to the Democrats, did Trump decide that funding a border wall was imperative—so much so that he forced a destructive partial government shutdown over it.
Democrats in Congress have refused to back what they see as a waste of money. This impasse has kept the shutdown going into its fourth week and eroded confidence in America’s global leadership.
How did things get to this point? Why has the American political system failed to produce a working compromise on what is, by U.S. government standards, a relatively modest funding request? The reason is far more complex than just a wall. This debate is not simply about that structure itself, but about deeper schisms in the American polity over the meaning of national security and the country’s essential character at a time of demographic change.
Trump and his supporters have used a number of arguments to push for the border wall, but the foundation of their case is that it is necessary for national security. This has been a persistent theme in the president’s Twitter feed, his favorite way to promote his positions. “We need the Wall for the safety and security of our country,” he tweeted a year ago. “The problem is, without a Wall there can be no real Border Security — and our Country must finally have a Strong and Secure Southern Border!” he wrote earlier this month. And this week, he tweeted that “A big new Caravan is heading up to our Southern Border from Honduras...Only a Wall or Steel Barrier, will keep our Country safe!”
These assertions have flummoxed opponents of the wall, to say the least, including congressional Democrats. While Trump administration officials claim that terrorists often try to enter the United States through unwalled sections of the border, there is no evidence to support that. They claim a wall could stop the flow of narcotics, even though government data shows that the vast majority of drugs are smuggled into the United States via policed ports of entry. And they have constantly exaggerated the threat of hard-core criminals crossing the southern border and tried to link it to immigration. This all suggests that the security gained from walling the entire border would not justify the many billions of dollars it would cost.
Why, then, are Trump and his supporters so adamant about it? The answer is that for the president and much of the American political right, the border wall has become a proxy for deeper fears about the cultural and demographic shifts underway in the United States. Estimates are that America will be “minority white” by 2045, according to census projections. A 2017 survey showed that the share of Americans who identify as white and Christian had dipped below 50 percent.
It is hard to imagine how the U.S. can help maintain global security if it is torn apart by questions about its identity and the very meaning of national security.
Much of Trump’s nationalist message has always been based on nostalgia, whether economic nostalgia characterized by longing for American trade surpluses, robust heavy industry and lucrative coal mining, or a cultural and demographic nostalgia for an America dominated by white Christians. That is why even Americans little affected by immigration are passionate about it. The issue is not that immigration or immigrants directly impact their lives, but that immigration and immigrants symbolize to them the frightening pace of cultural change. The border wall is a response to this fear, capitalizing on deep human needs to be separate from threats or the unknown. It is an emotionally powerful metaphor for the desire to keep change at bay, more symbolic than practical.
The changing nature of national security, seared into the American psyche by 9/11, is also a factor. Until 9/11, Americans tended to think of security threats as faraway things. America had adversaries in Europe, Asia, Central and South America, and even Africa, but other than the specter of ballistic missile attack from the Soviet Union and later Russia, the homeland was generally safe. Then 9/11 showed that in today’s intensely interconnected world, the American homeland was no longer so secure. Even in the small towns of the heartland, security threats seemed more real than in the past.
And it is precisely in these places that immigration has also brought more visible change. The big cities of the coasts have long been shaped by immigration, but in the past few decades, the trends have touched nearly every American city and town, including many unaccustomed to immigration. As a result, anxiety over security has merged with concerns about the pace of these cultural and demographic shifts to turn immigration into a defining issue for an important segment of the American public.
This does not bode well for America’s broader role in the world and its ability to lead. It is hard to imagine how the United States can help create and maintain global security if it is torn apart by questions about its identity as a nation and the very meaning of national security. The United States is unlikely to build a complete wall along its southern border and may not even construct much beyond the barriers that currently exist. Ultimately the questions about Trump’s wall are not really about increasing security but about how, or whether, Americans adapt to the broad changes underway in the world and within their own borders.
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