The Terrifying Gaps in Scott Walker’s Idea for a Canadian Border Wall

.

.

.

If Scott Walker is really serious about a Border Wall dividing us from Canada, he’s going to have to think a lot harder than he has!

Being serious students of Presidential politics and international policy, Orange Juice Blog readers surely already know that Republican Presidential candidate Scott Walker stated, in response to a question on NBC’s Meet the Press, that to serve the cause of fighting terrorism the U.S. should explore not only building a wall separating us from Mexico, but one separating us from Canada as well.

The Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker said on Sunday that building a wall on the US northern border with Canada was “a legitimate issue for us to look at”.

Asked in an interview on NBC if he wanted to build a wall on the Canadian border, the Wisconsin governor cited his experience talking to voters “including some law enforcement folks” in New Hampshire, an early voting state in the Republican primaries. Such people, he said, were concerned about terrorists potentially crossing over from Canada.

“They raised some very legitimate concerns, including some law enforcement folks that brought that up to me at one of our town hall meetings about a week and a half ago,” Walker said. “So that is a legitimate issue for us to look at.”

It’s painful to read the above and realize that Scott Walker is obviously not serious about fighting terrorism and illegal immigration!  As shown in the inset to the graphic above, building a wall on the Canadian border is ludicrous — a complete non-starter! — because much of the Canadian border is a water border along four of the Great Lakes!  (Technically, Lake St. Clair — right near the strategic city of Detroit — makes it the “Great Lakes + 1.”)  A wall built in the water would have to go all of the way down to the lake bed, so that terrorists and illegal could not pass beneath it if it were somehow just floating there, and even then we’d have to be concerned about the prospect of their tunneling under the soft sediment!  No — a wall along the actual international border would be a terrible idea and Walker should be ashamed for having agreed to explore it.

Rather, as in Mexico, such a wall has to be built on US soil that we can control.  Otherwise, the damned thing can be defeated — and America cannot embrace defeat!  OJB has taken the liberty of indicating, in orange, the territory where we’d have to put a wall on our side of the water border if we want to protect the borders of Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.  AS WELL WE SHOULD!

But even a plan that would save us from terrorists going over Niagara Fall, Ontario in a barrel and making their way to Buffalo may not be enough!  There is a gap between the Northern and Southern Peninsulas of Michigan, connecting Lakes Michigan and Huron, through which terrorists or others might pass unimpeded by all of the walls depiected in orange.  And that’s why OJB suggests that IF WE ARE SERIOUS ABOUT THIS ANTI-TERRORIST AND ANTI-ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AGENDA, we also need to build the walls depicted in pink, protecting the shores of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan itself!  Do you want your job taken away because some government bureaucrat cut corners on the project?  How about YOUR LIFE?

Admittedly, this plan comes with a cost.  Views from the coastal areas may be somewhat impeded by a 20-foot wall (presuming that that’s enough) on the lake shores.  And, this plan would necessarily cede control over the Great Lakes, including shipping, to Canada.  But isn’t that a small price to pay for the safety that we could not possess if we tried to build a wall in the middle of the damnable Great Lakes (+1) themselves?  We think so — and we hope that Scott Walker will wake up and see that a 3000-mile half-solution isn’t half as good as a 4000-mile wall that … that …

Oh, God.  OJB just realized that we forgot that Alaska is part of the U.S. too!  So we’ll need a land wall with Canada along the Alaskan border.  Can the Coast Guard patrol the North Shore well enough to keep terrorimmigrants from crossing into Barrow?  We’re just going to print this for now and we’ll be back with a revised plan later.  If this was the hitch that was holding up Walker’s more detailed announcement about the design of such a wall, then we do owe him an apology.