«The politics of the decision are as follows. The border wall became a symbol of everything that was wrong with Mr Trump and his administration: left-leaning groups denounced it as heartless, ineffective and an affront to a close ally. There’s a tension between heartless and ineffective—how can the wall be both? But in any case the wall became a symbol of Mr Trump’s xenophobia. (...)
Immigration, and more specifically the sense that America does not control its borders, is one of the forces that propelled Mr Trump to the presidency. The same impulse is one of the things holding up funding for Ukraine in Washington. The new, isolationist right argues that America shouldn’t be paying to secure Ukraine’s borders when it can’t secure its own. This is a dumb policy but it sounds plausible. Uncontrolled immigration also undermines support for the legal kind. So Americans who would like to reduce the chances of a second Trump term, want to support Ukraine and want more legal immigration need an answer to “chaos at the southern border”.
Building some more of the wall could be part of that answer. It might even work: the people I spoke to near McAllen explained that, yes there will always be gaps in the wall, but it is easier to make sure those gaps are patrolled than to guard all of an area that is nearly 2,000 miles long. There is a real problem at the border. Democrats who think this is just an obsession on Fox News should spend some time in Texas. The wall is indeed partly symbolic, but symbols matter. (...)»
Checks and Balance newsletter from John Prideaux, US editor of The Economist
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