Opinion: The U.S.-Mexico border is better without a wall

To the editor: Ronald Reagan, where art thou now? We need you to tell Mr. Trump, “Tear down that wall!” (“Trump’s border wall may be controversial, but some Southern California firms want to build it,” March 2)

We would be far better off with no wall at all along the U.S.-Mexico border. A free-flowing population would be self-regulating.

If too many migrants came north and found no jobs, the word would quickly be out and others would not risk the lack of opportunity and subsequent hardship. If businesses needed unskilled labor, the need would be filled naturally with local or migrant labor instead of sending the work abroad.

We should provide great tax incentives to invest and develop across borders without artificial barriers.

Cecil Dover, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Build a wall? That’s not what Americans do.

We innovate, open new frontiers, look for what’s new. We’re not the kind of people who huddle behind a wall, fearful of Latino workers.

But President Trump will build it, and it will be instantly useless. Already, fewer immigrants are trying to come. Who would want to come to a country where bigotry is institutionalized, where people of color are scapegoated, where white supremacists have the attention of the White House?

This wall will be a memorial to our addiction to cheap labor, our dithering Congress and an electorate with fuzzy reasoning skills. Trump’s Cower will fall, as all walls do. Riddled with holes, rusting, ridiculed, it will one day be just pieces of metal sticking out of the drifting sands.

And that will be beautiful, so beautiful.

Marge England, Garden Grove

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