Republican candidate Scott Walker has raised a controversial topic about building a wall between America and Canada. Walker believes that it is a serious issue. Walker claims that we have to fear a terrorist attack coming through Canada. Canada has seen two Islamist terrorist attacks in the past years and Walker feels that Americans could be at risk. The republican fight for nomination has been dominated by talk of immigration. Donald Trump has taken a strong stand against immigration and many republican however a majority of the discussion has revolved around Mexico.http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/30/scott-walker-canada-border-wall-immigration-terrorists
Scott Walker"s view on immigration has been shifting over the past two years. The governor of Wisconsin was quoted saying two years ago that it would be logical to grant citizenship to some of the undocumented immigrants. However, recently Walker said that undocumented immigrants were not entitled to amnesty. Also, recently Walker claimed that the number of legal immigrants may need to be curbed to protect American jobs. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/04/24/what-does-scott-walker-believe-on-immigration/
I feel that Donald Trump had a direct effect on Walkers shift on immigration. Trump strong stance against immigration forced Walker to take a stronger stand against immigration in fear of being denounced by Trump. Walker feels that if he stays highly tolerant of immigration he will be exploited by Trump and decided to lessen the gap between their views on immigration. Trump is leading the republican race right now and Walker does not want to be at the other end of the spectrum on such a heavily discussed topic like immigration.
While immigration was not a overwhelming topic in the Constitution, the southern and northern states were split on the topic of slavery. In the Constitution the founding fathers did not know whether or not to count slaces toward the population. If Walker had stuck to his proposal of giving some illegal immigrants citizenship it would raise of the issue of representation in the house. In the constitution the founding fathers had to compromise to could slaves as 3/5ths of a person. However, immigration talks could cause some states to lose or gain power depending on allowing immigrants to enter or not.
So while Walker claims that he would consider a wall between the U.S. and Canada due to terrorism risks, I feel that immigration could be another factor pushing his decision.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/08/30/walker-says-wall-along-canadian-border-worth-reviewing/u8pNzaDtZkUIqcYsCTNHhP/story.html
5 comments:
I understand Walker's sentiment, but in my opinion there's no point in his engaging in a race to the bottom. Being a struggling GOP candidate though, I suppose he's courting certain New Hampshire votes (http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/08/scott-walker-suggests-northern-border-wall.html)
BloombergView has yet to cover (and perhaps will not cover) Walker's resent statement, but their Aug 27th article (link below) leading up to Walker's foreign policy speech in South Carolina suggests that Walker has a history of making decisive foreign policy statements as he seeks to differentiate himself from other GOP candidates. Perhaps, as you suggested, Walker is taking a tip from Trump, but he might be biting off more than he can chew. While Trump makes statements that can only magnify the hype surrounding his already scathing personality, Walker's foray into radicalism might cost him the presidency.
I agree that Walker stance on immigration is changing. But it is debatable whether the change is entirely due to Trump's influence. Walker does have a record of taking a hard stance against terrorism, what with his statements regarding Iran (and other candidate's subsequent denouncing of his eagerness to take action as a "Day One President") Not even Trump took such a radical stance on scrapping the Iran deal on Day One, and Walker was criticized for likening his fight against Wisconsin protesters to "the fight against the Islamic State."
To which Walker responded, “My point was, the kind of pressure that I was under at the height of the [Wisconsin] protests, with the death threats and everything else, showed that I have the capacity to handle pressure," he said. "I wasn’t intimidated.”
In summary, Walker seems to be painting himself as a candidate scrounging for newsworthy policy snaps in an floundering effort to make himself known. Maybe this time he'll have succeeded at last. But while Trump may be heralding a new political consciousness, Walker's radicalism is at best a poor imitation.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-27/scott-walker-stakes-his-territory-on-foreign-policy
Note that I apologize for spelling/grammar. Recent is spelled with a "c" and not an "s." Thanks.
I agree with Casey and Janet that Trump's hard stance against immigration, especially the immigration of Hispanics, is influencing many other Republican candidates, to also shift their stances on immigration to the right. For example, after Trump stated that he wanted to abolish birthright citizenship, many other GOP candidates, including Scott Walker and Ted Cruz, joined him in this stance. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2015/08/20/donald-trump-scott-walker-support-end-to-birthright-citizenship
In addition, even though Jeb Bush has been thought to be more sympathetic to Hispanics, he defended his use of the controversial term "anchor baby," which was used to describe children who are born in the U.S. to illegal immigrant parents, claiming that this was just another example of "political correctness." In addition, Bush claimed that "anchor baby" referred more to the practice of birth tourism by mostly wealthy Asian mothers, causing many Asian American groups to denounce his statements. http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/24/politics/jeb-bush-donald-trump-anchor-baby/index.html
Although many Americans have identified with Trump's view on immigration, I think it could be detrimental for the other Republican candidates to also follow his stance just to appeal to conservative voters in the primaries because in the general election it would be harder to appeal to the two fastest growing segments of the American population, Hispanics and Asians, both of which have large immigrant backgrounds.
Are we really ones to judge two terrorists attacks seeing as how we have had a few of our own this year? Although I partially understand because parts of Canada operate under Sharia law, yet can we scapegoat all muslims as potential terrorists? And are we not hypocritical if we decide to build a wall since we also have had our share of terrorist attacks?
This is hilarious. The Canada/US border stretches about 4,000 miles, good luck with funding. In all seriousness, as Janet pointed out, this political stunt may have given Walker's name some familiarity at the expense of his credibility. Sealing up the biggest border in North America to delay a few measly terrorist attacks is not logical. As for Trumps stance on immigration, I don't like it. There's room in this country, room built by generations of immigrants. I tell myself that I stay away from mainstream media because of what is covered, which is usually absurd, extreme stories in the interest of money or fame and I think the coverage of political campaigns is half a notch above TMZ. As catchy a headline Walker's statement creates, I don't care.
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