fwiw, i actually don't have an opinion on a border fence.

democrats are bizarrely fixated on the price. but, it's an infrastructure project, so it should pay for itself via multiplier effects; it should also create some long term employment around the administration of it. so, if you want to tell me that the reason you oppose the wall is because you're opposed to deficit spending, i'm not on your side on that at all - and every time i hear a democrat say something about how america can't afford the wall, i write them off as a conservative. on purely economic terms, it's a great idea, and i'm all for it.

now, if you want to talk about the humanitarian basis of it, that's something else. a "great wall of texas", if effective, would cut off legitimate refugee claims, even as it cuts down on economic migrants. and, yes - i would support a schengen agreement with the nafta partners in principle, but only on the premise that mexico can secure it's southern borders. once labour mobility is established across the trade zone, and the border is properly secured, then you can talk about extending it to the next leg, subject to the central american countries meeting certain conditions about labour standards. for right now, i would support attempts to limit the movement of economic migrants; the focus should be on helping them improve the conditions in their home countries.

everybody knows they're being used as ways to avoid obeying labour laws, which both exploits them and undercuts legal workers. there's nothing left-wing about housing them in a church for a few weeks, and then helping them get a job for half of the minimum wage, and no benefits - and if you think there is, you're just a useful idiot for capital. this doesn't improve working conditions, it doesn't build revolutionary potential, it doesn't do anything of value to the left at all - it just cements the existing system in place buy buying into calvinist ideas about work ethic, and perpetuating the lie that we call the "american dream". wide open borders don't help anybody except the bourgeois class.

it is for this reason that i remain skeptical that any meaningful barrier will be built - it is not in the interests of capital to erect a border barrier. the local food industries would have to pay people, all of a sudden. and, the elite couldn't buy their guatemalan house slaves any more. it would be a catastrophe.

but, the thing is that i'm not sure the narrative around the wall is realistic. putting aside the realities of the interests of capital, if we are to oppose the wall because it would prevent refugee claims, well, ok, but would a wall really do that? or would it act as a check point, thereby merely slowing down the process of admittance?

i think trump is imagining that the wall is just going to have a couple of soldiers patrolling it, as a complete separation between the two countries - that the wall will cut migration down to zero by making it impossible to get through. but, of course, this is delusional. these people will just appear at the border and make their claims, anyways. the difference is in increasing the ability to manage existing migration, rather than altering it, and is that particularly awful?

see, and this is really the crux of it - i've said before that i would oppose the wall on humanitarian grounds (rather than economic grounds. i would support it on economic grounds.), but the more i've thought it through, the less i think it really matters. so, i find myself without much of an opinion, because i don't imagine it would really make a lot of difference.

of course, i live in canada. the shut down affects me more than the wall does.

....but when you strip away all of the alarmism and reactionary propaganda from both sides, the most substantive analysis is probably simply that "it would be good for the economy".