Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez compared President Donald Trump’s border wall plans with the Berlin Wall – a Cold War symbol of communist oppression that divided Germany for nearly three decades.
The New York Democrat made her remarks during a livestream video for her supporters during which she discussed the scrutiny she received since she won last year’s election.
“No matter how you feel about the wall, I think it’s a moral abomination. I think it’s like the Berlin Wall. I think it’s like any other wall designed to separate human beings and block out people who are running away from the humanitarian disasters. I think it’s just wrong,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
First and foremost, I want to take a look in history as to why the Berlin Wall was made.
The Berlin Wall stood from 1961 to 1989 as a Soviet-manned barrier between East and West Berlin, and came to symbolize the Cold War’s “Iron Curtain” that separated communist Eastern European countries from the democratic West.
Its purpose was to keep people in East Berlin, the city’s communist sector, from fleeing to West Berlin.
“The Berlin Wall was meant to keep people inside the socialist/communist utopia and stop them from fleeing to the decadent capitalist west,” Gad Saad, an evolutionary behavioral scientist at the John Molson School of Business tweeted.
President Trump’s proposed border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, meanwhile, has been touted as a deterrent against drugs and human trafficking, in addition to a way to reduce illegal immigration numbers in the United States.
Whereas the Berlin Wall was intended to keep people inside the East Germany to prevent mass defections to freedom in the West.
No matter how you feel about Trump’s wall, constructing a national border barrier to prevent unauthorized access is self-evidently different from building a wall designed to trap people inside.
Ocasio-Cortez made her comments the same day Trump announced during a news conference that he was declaring a national emergency so he could shift funds from several federal agencies.
He’s trying to get $8 billion to build his barrier after Congress approved only $1.3 billion.
Senior White House Adviser Stephen Miller was interviewed on Fox to respond to claims of the president overpowering Congress.
“The statute, Chris, is clear on its own terms,” Miller said. “Congress had appropriated money for construction of border barriers consistently. This is part of the national security.”
The stakes are high for the White House, which has struggled to see the new wall funding win approval in Congress.
On Feb. 15, Trump signed a spending bill that included just $1.4 billion for the border security, which is far short of the $5.7 billion he requested for the wall.
The compromise legislation, whereupon overwhelmingly passed in the House and Senate last week, contained enough funding for building 55 miles of barricades, not the 200-plus miles the White House has sought. The bill provided additional funding for 5,000 more beds that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could use to house illegal immigrants.
In an attempt to pressure the agency to detain fewer illegal immigrants, Democrats ensured that the bill did not include funding for the 2,000 additional ICE agents, or the 750 Border Patrol agents requested by the Trump administration.
Is the border wall beneficial for the United States across Mexico?
If we approach this from the mind-set of trying to stop human and drug trafficking: the answer is yes. By this we can limit illegal immigration and start having legalized immigrants.
It is also unfair for those that have their papers and came to the U.S. legally who work hard and wait, while those that are illegal try to cross from different transportation depths that put their life at risk.
The Award-Winning Texas A&M University-Kingsville Student Publication
