Are walls and tighter border controls the answer to the big questions on immigration? Do they achieve what their advocates set out to do? Or should the world aim to return to a time when less xenophobia and more trust in people was the order of the day?
Soon after his inauguration President, Donald Trump signed orders to start building a wall between Mexico and USA. There is an existing fence along most of the 2,000 mile border with some 17,000 US Border Protection officers patrolling it. But is as much the anti-migrant, xenophobic attitude and intentions that led to this presidential order as the physical barrier itself. A brief history of border and city wall building does not provide comfortable bed-fellows or successful examples for the president.
Not new
Walls to keep people out (or in) are not new. In AD 122 Roman Emperor Hadrian started to build a wall between England and Scotland to keep the Scottish Picts and Ancient Britons out. There never was a real threat from them.