Donald Trump's Great Wall — it didn't work for the Ming Dynasty either

Heidi M. Przybyla | USA TODAY

Donald Trump is vowing to build a wall along the U.S. Southern border with Mexico, likening it to the Great Wall of China and even dubbing his proposed border barrier "The Great Wall of Trump."

It's a key part of a tough-on-immigration stance that has powered him to front-runner status in Republican polls and will likely be touted again by the billionaire real estate developer at Wednesday's debate.

Yet, just as the Ming Dynasty’s 13,000-mile wall failed to keep out the Manchurians, Trump's barricade would likely be an ineffective way of addressing the nation’s immigration challenges, border experts say.

"The consensus is, it didn’t work very well,’’ said Edward Alden, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, of the wall that dates back to the 14th century, which the Manchurians repeatedly broke through.

The idea of walling off a nation, either to stop immigration flows or foreign invaders, has broad historical appeal — from Roman Emperor Hadrian’s stone wall to Israel’s West Bank wall and Northern Ireland’s divide between its Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods. However, walls are often more symbolic barriers than practical ones. The Germans just marched around the French Maginot Line to invade Belgium, and the Manchurians repeatedly broke through the Great Wall of China.

Even the most ardent critics of U.S. immigration policy are not clamoring for a wall. The emphasis, they say, should be on cracking down on those who overstay their visas and the companies that employ them.

"We almost never talk about the wall, rarely talk about the border actually,’’ said Roy Beck, president of Numbers USA, which advocates for less immigration.

The policy disconnect between the experts and Trump over the wall highlights a weakness his Republican challengers hope will eventually undermine his candidacy.

Trump doesn’t revel in policy, telling conservative broadcaster Hugh Hewitt recently that his strength is hiring good people to deal with such details.

Part of the appeal of the Great Wall of Trump is that it’s an easy solution to a complex problem that plays to American economic angst, according to immigration experts.

"Just to say 'build a big wall,’ that to me is a statement, it’s not a proposal,’’ said Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles. "It’s very simplistic and he’s just saying it to satisfy a sector of the conservative base.’’ Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks did not respond to requests for comment.

Border fencing, with razor wire and cameras, already exists along portions of the U.S. border, such as in heavily populated areas like the San Diego suburbs near Tijuana, and it is credited by the Department of Homeland Security as having brought down illegal crossings significantly.

It does not stop migrants from scaling or digging beneath it but rather it slows them down long enough to allow U.S. border personnel to act, according to Marc Rosenblum, deputy director at the Migration Policy Institute. There are many other vast areas where few attempt to cross, Iraqi War-era drones are already on patrol and fencing is expensive.

Trump says he would fund the project by forcing Mexico to pay for it by confiscating the wages earned by their undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and tripling the number of the nation’s deportation officers by eliminating some tax breaks they can currently claim.

However, many of the new arrivals are Central Americans fleeing violence and extreme poverty. Many of them are turning themselves into border guards, not evading them. Minus these asylum seekers and unaccompanied minors, the number of undocumented apprehended on the U.S.-Mexico border is at a 40-year low, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Despite Trump's comparison to the Great Wall of China, a more apt historical comparison to Trump's proposal might be the Berlin Wall, which was built in 1961. At its height in the 1970s, about 30,000 guards were employed to man the border. Given the length of the southwest border, the U.S. would need about 60,000 border guards, a three-fold increase, said Alden.

The German border wall also had barbed wire, flood lights and shoot-to-kill orders. Even so, 5% of the people attempting to cross the border succeeded. "Even with that level of deployment, hardware and guards who were prepared to kill people, they still couldn’t seal that border,’’ said Alden.

The U.S. Border Patrol estimates that it already either catches or turns back nearly 90% of those it observes trying to cross the border.

Still, Trump is tapping into anger fueled by images of immigrants piling up at the border, said Rosenblum. Trump is also pushing the rest of the Republican field to the right on immigration. A number have even repeated his call for revoking birthright citizenship for babies born to undocumented immigrants.

"We have powerful footage of large numbers of people swarming across the border,’’ said Rosenblum. "It provokes an emotional reaction in people’’

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