We could deploy Army to border

Comparing a southern border fence to stop immigrants from crossing illegally to the Berlin Wall (“Fence similar to Berlin Wall,” Jacqueline R. Smetak, June 21) is a specious argument. The Berlin Wall was constructed by a brutal communist regime to keep its people in.

Our porous border is not only allowing in the venerated Mexican peasants, but tons of drugs manufactured in Latin America. For good measure, let's throw in a few hundred Middle Eastern terrorists and other neer-do-wells bent on our destruction.

Try and sneak across the Mexican border and see what happens to you. You'll first see the inside of a despicable jail cell before being deported. You sure won't receive taxpayer-paid medical care, education or any other social service.

Smetak also wrote, “Republican lawmakers have referred to immigrants as ‘illegals.'?” That is what they are as they did, indeed, enter our country illegally. It is against our law. Unfortunately many successive Democrat and Republican administrations have equally not upheld the law or their constitutional duty to secure our frontier.

So, if Smetak and others abhor a wall on our southern border to protect the integrity of our sovereignty, I suggest we deploy U.S. Army armored infantry divisions in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The politically correct should love that solution. It would at least allow wildlife unfettered transit.

Joe Gantner

Cedar Rapids