“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…”

That’s the first line of a favorite poem of mine, “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost. It talks about a man’s reflections on the barriers between people as he and a neighbor mend a stone fence on their property line. The neighbor’s philosophy is simple. He quotes the old proverb, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

The poet questions this. He can see reasons why walls are sometimes necessary, but doesn’t accept that they should always be there. Barriers are not always a good thing. I’d take that a step further and say that usually they don’t.

When we start putting up barriers it’s generally because we want to protect ourselves. The current discussion over a physical of figurative wall along the southern border of the U.S. reflects this. We are worried about losing jobs, losing money sent back to families south of the border, losing resources as more aliens receive benefits from social services, even losing identity as more people who from outside mainstream American culture live in the country. You hear this when someone makes a statement like, “I had to walk six blocks before I heard a word of English. I couldn’t even tell I was in America.”

There are some real concerns about this. There are limits to how many immigrants our system can handle. There is a great deal of crime associated with people crossing the border illegally. (Of course an illegal crossing itself is a crime but I mean people smuggling, sexual slavery, drug smuggling, and other more malign crimes that attach to it.) There is also the exploitation of the immigrants themselves which is facilitated by their illegal status. Employers often practice fraud, allow unsafe working conditions, pay substandard wages, etc. There’s even the danger of terrorists using the human traffic to bring dangerous people into the U.S.

I wish I could say that I’m smart enough to know what kind of immigration policy would prevent all of these problems. I’m not. I don’t have a policy solution and this isn’t a political blog. What I do want to lift up is the idea that a wall (real of metaphorical) is not a solution. It’s just a way of separating the world into ‘us’ and ‘them’ and pretending that our problems will all be solved if we just keep ‘them’ out.1

It’s a mindset that people have fallen into in many times and places. You can see it clearly in the New Testament where ‘unclean’ people were regularly excluded from the life of the community. With the best of intentions (protecting our people, our faith, and our identity) the religious officials found ways to exclude the physically and emotionally ill, foreigners, and people who fell short of the standards of purity.

This set up a powerful tension between these leaders and Jesus. He drew the harshest criticism when he reached out to the people on the other side of the cultural walls. He touched the untouchable, connected to foreigners with kindness and respect, and shared meals with tax collectors and prostitutes. For him there was no ‘them.’ He offered everyone a chance to be ‘us’ without walls.

We lose touch with this when we start to focus on walls, and we connect to a different way of thinking. As physical walls go up so do the emotional walls of hate and fear. I’m not saying that everyone who wants to control immigration is a hate-monger, but the danger of becoming caught in the same mindset is very real. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports a 40% growth in American hate groups since 2000. This appears to be directly connected to the immigration debate.

"This kind of really vile propaganda begins in hate groups, makes its way out into the larger anti-immigration movement, and, before you know it, winds up in places like 'Lou Dobbs Tonight' on CNN," said Mark Potok, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project. "This country needs a robust debate on immigration, but it does not need a debate based on racist allegations and bogus conspiracy theories." (The full article can be found at http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=762 )

As I said before, I’m not smart enough to have the answer to the immigration question. I am convinced though that it isn’t about building more walls. Good fences don't make good neighbors.