OPINION
Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
June 5, 2017
Volume 27 Number 11
June 5, 2017
ISSN: 1094-9453
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TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA
n Polo
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A Wall for our Americas
C
ome close. I want to tell you something. Pero
please, not a word of this to mi familia or my
facebook friends. Not a whisper to my
Mexican or Muslim best buds. Nor to our Filipino or
Chinese neighbors. Okay?
Here goes: I submitted a bid to build The Wall.
That $20-billion wall. Sure, big U.S. and Mexican
contractors submitted theirs. But mine will win,
because my Wall will dwarf China’s Great Wall.
Mine’ll divide the Americas in a way that will put
Israel’s awful Wall to shame. Remember that ugly
thing that cut Germany in two? — Forget about it.
Forget all that old-school history, my Wall is cool,
what’s more, it’s practical and cheap.
The Border Wall must be cool because, as any
fifth-grader will tell you, our executive branch
can propose whatever it wants, but only congress
can fund it. And congressional approval requires
cool.
To please establishment GOPers, my Wall has
swinging doors — the kind harried waiters
hip-bump dashing between steamy kitchens and
hungry eaters. Willamette Valley farmers, Clatsop
County dairymen, and Beaverton suburb builders
love this feature. I asked.
Ask chambers of commerce, coast to coast.
They’re not shy about articulating just how far
behind the ball D.C. has been in lowering the black-
berry bramble of federal regs, appellate board deci-
sions, federal court rulings, and presidential orders
that in the awful aggregate gets called “immigra-
tion law.”
Sure, our angry neighbors insist “those illegal
aliens gotta wait in line,” like their ancestors waited
at Angel Island or Ellis Island. But N.E. Broadway’s
café owners and Silicon Forest chipmakers will say:
“What line?”
For both our demand and supply sides, there is no
system to meet their needs. Business big and small
has waited for decades. Analogize this to running
trains or busses. Imagine TriMet’s sleek MAX or my
morning bus without their handy ticket outlets or
those hip smartphone apps. My Great Wall will
have tidy turnstile ticket machines, miles and miles
of them. Pling-pling.
Liberal Demos will love my bid too. My Wall
To please establishment GOPers,
my Wall has swinging doors —
the kind harried waiters hip-bump
dashing between steamy kitchens
and hungry eaters. Willamette Valley
farmers, Clatsop County dairymen,
and Beaverton suburb builders
love this feature. I asked.
includes cool passage for the healthy grazing and
happy mating of Mexican jaguar, West Indian
manatee, pronghorn antelope too. It’s chest high
where our Pacific Northwest monarchs and
Chapman Elementary chimney swifts have always
crossed. Not cool is dividing our love for bugs and
birdies from our love for human families, each doing
what each has always done everywhere, across our
precious planet’s well-worn face.
Because my Wall will be less about walling out
necessary and natural phenomena, my Wall is
cheap. Say, 70 percent less to build — less the pro-
ceeds from ticket sales to those 10 million shame-
lessly ambitious Mexican men and women already
working real hard here. And, add to the “plus”
column, lease proceeds for 1,000 spidery cell towers
I’ll raise to keep up with expanding markets for the
great ideas, for Amazon deliveries, and for the
digitalized dollars these families spread across our
Americas.
Sure, getting zippy chimney swifts and grumpy
jaguars to pay for passage will be harder, but not
really necessary. Big Wall talk is actually not
about barrier building. The former USSR tried and
tried to divide Europe, but now chunks of Berlin’s
Wall are on eBay. China tried it too, but today’s
Great Wall crawls with tourists. It’s really more
about national theater. And that won’t cost $20
billion.
Bottom line of my no-drama bid: Dollars and
goods move, people and birdies move, Depoe Bay’s
beloved gray whale families move. This movement
has always been necessary and natural. Beautiful.
Only borders are new. And tall Walls are dumb.
Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.
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