Is The Donald (Trump) original?
Not really.
Trump goes to the Arizona-Mexico border and calls for the U.S. to "build a wall.:
Outrageous?
Fences, Walls, & other Barriers
Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Us-mexico-border.jpg
From the EBSCO web site:
- In 1986, Congress passed, and President Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), granting lawful permanent residence to 2.7 million people. Instead of ending the flow of illegal immigration, it actually caused a brief spike, as family members of the newly legal residents entered the country illegally. Within a decade, the number of illegal immigrants was back to more than five million.
In 1990, (Geo. H. Bush administration) the United States constructed a 66-mile (106-kilometer) fence along the California coast from San Diego to the Pacific Ocean to deter illegal immigration. Arrests of illegal immigrants in the San Diego region declined sharply as a result of the fence, but increased nearly 600 percent in Arizona, where the number of accidental deaths also climbed as Mexicans attempted to traverse the harsh desert environment.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The act increased fines for illegal aliens, provided additional funding for border patrol and surveillance, and also approved the installation of an additional 14-mile (22-kilometer) fence near San Diego. Some landowners in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas erected their own fences, often with the help of militia, but no permanent barrier had been constructed by the government in these areas until recently.
The Secure Fence Act, signed by President George W. Bush in 2006, promised 700 miles (1,126 kilometers) of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border; however, lawsuits and protests from citizen groups halted construction. The Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife filed a lawsuit challenging the ability of the Bush administration to waive important environmental regulations in order to build the wall on the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in Arizona. These regulations include the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. In October 2007, a U.S. district court sided with the organizations and stopped construction.
Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), introduced the Borderlands Conservation and Security Act (HR 2593) in 2007. The bill would mitigate some of problems cited by critics of the Secure Fence Act.
The EBSCO site cited above, History of Border Walls in the U.S. and Around the World, includes interesting information on other, more famous, walls, including:
- The Great Wall of China was constructed during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644
Hadrian's Wall (76-138 CE) stretched more than 73 miles and was as thick as 10 feet.
The Berlin Wall, built in 1961, was 96-miles long and nearly 12 feet high.
Walls around cities were - are - so common they don't rate a mention on the site.
John McCain & "Sitting out the War"
Image from the Dry Bones blog
Although he claimed it was just a joke, Al Frankel - before he became the Democratic senator from Minnesota, he was quoted by CNN stating:
- "I have tremendous respect for McCain but I don't buy the war hero thing. Anybody can be captured. I thought the idea was to capture them. As far as I'm concerned he sat out the war," Franken quipped to Salon for a 2000 article about the stakes of that year's presidential election.
So, while The Donald's remarks may seem scandalous and outrageous, they are anything but original and they manage to cross party lines.
No comments:
Post a Comment