Re: My column today:

Dear Jonah
While discussing walls, let’s remember that the Berlin wall as well as those
in the Middle East were very formidable and yet those yearning to be free
or whatever still found a way through them. If the incentive to cross is high
enough, they will find a way.
Bush was asked a long time ago how to solve the border problem and his
response was “Make things better on the other side.”
Super IDs, rapid processing of visas, and streamlining payroll deductions to
get taxes and health care premiums on the books would do wonders for
shrinking the underground economy.
I am afraid we will get a wall instead, but the same money would be better
spent in databases and agencies to get money handling onto the books.

Me: I don’t necessarily dispute that the reader’s alternative to a wall might be a better way to go, but the idea that lots of folks made it through the Berlin Wall is poppycock. In the history of the wall only some 5,000 made it through (if memory serves) and somewhere between half and two-thirds of those were while the wall was still being constructed and there were many holes. I think I can say without fear of serious contradiction that the number of people who “really wanted” to leave East Germany or the Soviet Empire exceeded 5,000 by a very comfortable margin. Similarly, the suggestion that walls in the Middle East don’t work has been disproved on the ground relentlessly. No one says they are 100% effective — nothing is. But they do reduce unwanted traffic by very significant amounts.

Oh, and just to head-off a lot of email, I’m talking about modern walls designed to keep out migrants and civilians not ancient walls designed to keep out armies, just in case some forlks wanted to make arguments based on examples in antiquity (hey, I know my readers pretty well at this point).