Building Wall Is Top Priority

            Donald Trump campaigned on the promise to build a wall along the southern border in the 2016 presidential election. Reports are that some sections of the wall have been built and/or repaired. According to a recent poll Republican voters are not satisfied with the amount of wall that has been completed.

            According to the latest Harvard/Harris Poll, “building a wall at the southern border and reducing all immigration” is at the top of the list of issues for Republican voters. The poll says that “22 to 25 percent of these voters said building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border should be the president’s number one goal today.” 

            The second priority according to the poll is “Reducing all immigration – both illegal and legal.” “Between 19 and 20 percent of these voters said reducing the inflow of immigrants should be Trump’s second top priority.”

            Republicans are not the only people wanting a wall built. “Even among all U.S. voters, building a border wall and reducing all immigration to the country ranks as the fourth top priority. For swing voters, building a border wall and reducing all immigration are the third and fourth top priorities, following stimulating jobs and passing an infrastructure bill.”

            Other polls are reporting similar results among Republicans and conservative voters for reducing immigration. “In a Reuters/Ipsos Poll last month, GOP voters called immigration the ‘most important problem’ facing the nation and a Harvard Institute of Politics poll found that young GOP voters were the most skeptical of immigration. Similarly, a recent Fox News poll revealed that a plurality of 43 percent of Republican voters said immigration hurts the U.S.”

            I do not believe that immigration per se hurts the United States. Immigration is good for America when it is done the right way. For example, immigrants and their posterity are keeping the United States above the 2.1 replacement fertility rate. However, American is a sovereign nation and has the right and the authority to decide which immigrants to allow into the country.

            It appears that more and more Americans are seeing the dangers of allowing hordes --hundreds of thousands -- of poor, unskilled immigrants to flood into the nation. Some of the dangers being brought by the migrants are diseases, crime, and drugs. When I and millions of other Americans cannot get on an airplane to fly to another state without our bodies and luggage being searched, why should we allow just anyone to cross the border? We need a barrier to keep all unwanted and uninvited migrants from entering our nation.