Here we are again with the federal government partly shut down, for who knows how long, over the issue of whether or not to appropriate money to build a Wall along the length of the border with Mexico. “Wall” is capitalized because that is how its proponents, from the president on down, seem to think about it. In our view, the Wall is a psychological illusion that does nothing to address the main source of immigration law violation, which is people who enter the country legally and then overstay their visas. Serious enforcement of the existing immigration laws would require an entirely different approach.

The purpose of the Wall is psychological. Bismarck once said the Americans were lucky because they were bordered on two sides by weak neighbors and the other two by fish. Americans like to think of the continental United States as a de facto island immune from the rest of the world. We inherited that outlook from the British, who felt, from Shakespeare until the Luftwaffe arrived, that what Churchill called “our famous island race” was uniquely favored by Providence because they lived on an island. September 11 was our Luftwaffe, and it is no longer possible to think of ourselves as being able to take or leave the outside world at will. Instead, it is very much here, both as foreign competition and as domestic competition from immigrant labor. Mexico and points south remain our neighbors, but they are no longer weak in their ability to affect what happens in this country.