Fencing around privilege.

• Author: Hightower, Jim
• Position: The Lowdown - Column

If good fences make good neighbors, what do bad fences do?

You could ask the people along either side of the U.S.-Mexican border about that. Almost everyone who lives here--including business owners, workers, ranchers, mayors, bankers, and just plain folks--hate the very idea of the oppressive wall that is being erected right through their communities by Washington decree. Stretching for 700 miles and rising up to twenty feet high, this is not a fence but a monstrosity, a repugnant scar on their landscape, a monument to ignorance, and a grim barrier to the flow of life.

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In the Texas border towns that I know (such as El Paso, Del Rio, Eagle Pass, Laredo, and Brownsville), residents constantly go back and forth to their companion towns on the Mexican side (Juarez, Acuna, Piedras Negras, Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros). Social and cultural life, commerce, family, and friends are spread on both sides of the Rio Grande. The area's people know no border. But now they will, now that Washington is moving rapidly to erect this wall.

It would be one thing if Washington's Wall was going to achieve the stated purpose of stopping illegal Mexican immigrants from crossing into our economy. Border citizens are not against security or sensible immigration actions, but they know that it is sheer bureaucratic, xenophobic fantasy to think that even a multibillion-dollar steel edifice will deter people driven by abject poverty.

As Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano put it: "You show me a fifty-foot wall and I'll show you a fifty-one-foot ladder at the border." Over, under, or through, people will find a way. Indeed, on one completed stretch of fence near Columbus, New Mexico, human ingenuity is already winning out over bullheaded barricade builders. Border agents report that they started seeing cuts in the towering wall almost immediately after it was constructed. From simple hacksaws to plasma torches that can slice quickly through steel, immigrants have found their way through. And at least one group tried to use bungee cords to leap into our country!

Another way to defy the fence is to go through the gaps. The United States shares a 2,000-mile...