The Biggest Trade Barrier I Ever Saw

Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary says that a tariff is a schedule of duties imposed by a government on imported or in some countries exported goods. Wikipedia says that a tariff is also commonly called a trade barrier. I was in an economics class and I was asked what the number one export of Mexico was and I replied, "Mexicans." Before you get angry it was a joke and I think it accurately describes what much of middle-America feels. Now that we all see where the title of this blog is about to go, let me say this: trying to build a wall between Mexico and the United States is the most costly ineffective attempt to tariff a neighboring country's biggest export ever.

Walls are used historically for defense. It is bad politics to build walls with neighboring nations that you are on peaceful terms with. That's why France had beautiful walls on the mountainous terrain between themselves and Germany in 1941 and not on the border with Belgium.

The solution is not to make it more difficult for people to come into this country, but instead to make it easier. The inscription on the Statue of Liberty doesn't say, "No Vacancy."

Mexicans moving here will not and can not destroy 'our culture.' Why not? We don't have one. Our culture is the homogenization of hundreds of other cultures. We take everyone else's language, art, music, and food and make it our own. The current feeling against Mexicans is the same as has previously been felt against Chinese, Irish, Italians, and, oh yeah, white people.

I don't know if anybody remembers this or not, but we are being terribly hypocritical to say that we don't want these people to come into our country and destroy everything we've built. Europeans came to this country and took it from the native people. We moved them, killed them, and have since assimilated them.


Before you complain about Mexicans taking jobs away from Americans remember this: who gave the Mexicans the jobs? Shouldn't we be blaming those people?