“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.”
                                                    — Robert Frost
 
I don’t favor walls in the foothills. Walls and fences impede wildlife in their daily and annual migration. In society, political and economic walls attempt to sort the haves from the have-nots, occupied and occupier, and citizens from migrants and would-be immigrants.

A new Gallup survey found less than 40% support deporting all undocumented people. Nearly 80% support a path to citizenship for long-term undocumented residents, up from 64% last year.

It’s not surprising: current tactics by the federal administration remind the 97% of us who derive from immigrants of a basic truth. If we mistreat people as “others,” we could be the next “others.”

Santa Barbara residents have stepped up to support immigrants.

Hundreds packed the Franklin Community Center on July 15 to call upon the city to defend immigrants against raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Hundreds of others watched and listened outside as the proceedings were streamed in the parking lot.

The religious community is united in its support. Los Angeles Episcopal Bishop John Harvey Taylor was the lead drafter of a statement signed by 13 representatives of the L.A. County of Religious Leaders including Jewish, Evangelical Lutheran, African Methodist, Presbyterian, Armenian, United Methodist, Bahai, and Sikh leaders.

The ecumenical statement abhorred the federal administration’s tactics which are “sacrificing these, our neighbors, on the anvil of official hate, hammering them, sometimes literally as they lay powerless on the pavement, to meet brutal, inhumane quotas measured in human bodies. … These roundups are scarring the soul of the greatest nation on earth.”

Many, including the Episcopalians’ immigration justice ministry, Sacred Resistance, are organizing donations for families affected by ICE raids. They are seeking shelf-stable food donations, personal hygiene items, household essentials, and baby products, in addition to financial donations.

Beyond calling out bad behavior, the letter demands the administration implement a “humane solution to the overwhelmed asylum system and immediately restore the need-based refugee resettlement program that was the hallmark of Republican and Democratic administrations for decades.”

Indeed, such a solution was in process last year. In early 2024 a bipartisan group of senators assembled a package of border security measures addressing important issues such as the high number of border encounters and streamlining the asylum process.

When candidate Trump denounced the bill, however, many Republicans were “influenced” to withdraw support for the bill. It ultimately failed.

We continue with a system so broken that it’s unreasonable to blame migrants or the businesses who hire migrants without proper documentation.

Blame falls squarely on the administration, which is taking advantage of the broken system with its cruel, inhumane and indiscriminate roundups to make headlines and quotas.

As the joint clerical statement asserts: “A nation pledged to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness should not torture those whom United States enterprises have freely offered employment – agricultural workers, medical workers, hotel workers, construction workers, food-service workers, domestic workers, landscape workers, factory workers, and office workers.”

People flow in the direction of jobs and family. Climate change will vastly increase the number of refugees, including internal refugees fleeing sea level rise, drought, and fire.

Walls won’t hold them. Compassion alone won’t feed or house them.

We need big-picture, long-term thinking. We require global cooperation and programs to ensure people can earn a living wage legally.

International cooperation supporting clean industry in other countries is essential, so families can remain in their home countries with their loved ones.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall. But walls are rarely needed when the rules are fair and humanely applied.