The Gospel and the Border Wall

Talk of the US-Mexico border has played an integral part of the political discourse of the presidential election. Trump argues for a wall and Clinton argues for immigration reform. The one thing, however, that isn’t questioned is why the border exists in the first place.

Shortly after Trump first proposed his wall on the Southern border, I preached a sermon where I referenced Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall,” which starts this way.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The poem goes on to describe Frost and his neighbor, dutifully performing the annual ritual of mending the wall that the earth seemed to want gone. During this ritual Frost begins to question why the fence even exists in the first place.

There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

His neighbor seems undeterred by this line of thought and simply replies, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Unsatisfied, Frost continues his speculations, realizing that in the act of building fences we are either trying to keep someone in, or, in most cases, keep someone out. After that realization Frost returns to the reflection that, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” Nature seems ready and willing to undo our efforts of fencing in and walling out.

That, then brings me back to the US-Mexico border. Who exactly are we trying to keep out?

Of course first answers always go to the drug trade. We want to keep the violent cartels out of our back-yard, but we all know well that the solution to that isn’t a wall. The solution to that is getting rid of the demand for drugs in the first place. If illegal drugs weren’t being purchased illegal drugs wouldn’t be trafficked. A wall cannot solve that issue.

If we’re all truly honest, the Latinos we meet on an increasing basis aren’t criminals and low-lifes. They are hard-working women and men trying to make a living for their families. They attend Mass on Sundays, or prayer meeting on Tuesday night. They go to ESL classes to learn to communicate in their new home and they raise their children to appreciate both the culture from which they come and the new culture in which they live.

Why on earth, then, are so many of us trying so hard to keep them out? Why are we demonizing people who are fleeing economic hardship and gang and drug-fueled violence for the hope of a better life?

The author of Hebrews calls on us to extend hospitality to strangers for in doing so some entertain angels without knowing it. Borders and walls serve to keep strangers at a distance. The Gospel would have us welcome them in.

Something [or someone] there is that doesn’t love a [border],
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.