A wall between US and Canada?

An American presidential hopeful has brought up the idea of building a fence between the US and Canada, similar to the one with Mexico.

Republican presidential hopeful Scott Walker is the governor of Wisconsin.

In an interview on the US TV programme “Meet the Press”, Walker said his tough security talk extends to 6,400 kilometre long border with Canada.

Often billed as the world’s longest undefended border, Walker said building a fence is an issue worth exploring as a “ legitimate issue worth exploring.”

“Some people have asked us about that in New Hampshire. They raised some very legitimate concerns, including some law-enforcement folks that brought that up to me at one of our town-hall meetings about a week and a half ago,” the Wisconsin governor said on the NBC show.

In discussing the typical concern about border security with Mexico and the fence there, NBC host Chuck Todd asked Walker about Canada.

Todd asked the governor: “The most famous incident that we had of terrorists coming over our border was on our northern border. Why aren’t you talking about securing the northern border?”  This is possibly in reference to the completely debunked myth that the September 11 (9-11) terrorist plane hjackers entered the US from Canada, or possibly to failed millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam who had planned an explosion at Lost Angeles airport was stopped at by inspectors at the US border after coming from Canada.

The idea of a fence along the border with Canada is not new however,

A draft report  by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency in 2011 proposed the use of “fencing and other barriers” on the 49th parallel to manage “trouble spots where passage of cross-border violators is difficult to control.

Over the last few years the US Department of Homeland Security has beefed up its security along the border through high-tech surveillance methods. These include heat and motion sensors, cameras and aerial drones that patrol about 1,500 kilometres along the northern border from Washington to Minnesota as well as more than 300 kilometres of the Canadian border around New York state and Lake Ontario.

• Some other walls between countries
• Ceuta and Melilla Spanish enclaves in Morrocco : to keep out migrants who if they can enter are automatically on Spanish, ie EU territory and can claim asylum (double mesh- anti-climbing features- patrolled)
• Israel/Palestine high concrete in some places,  security fences-barbed wire elsewhere, patrolled, hi tech monitoring.  50 km long in Gaza, 600km when complete in West Bank
• Korea- N Korea says S Korea and the US built a a concrete wall with an earthen barrier so it can’t be seen from the south. S Korea and US deny there’s a wall. In any case an approximate 4 km no-man’s land exist along the whole border- land mines, patrolled, high tech monitoring.
• Hungary is building a 13 metre high fence along its border with Serbia to keep out a huge influx of migrants, about 80,000 this year.
• India and Pakistan have a long double wire fence, and India is building a 4,000km long fence along its border with Bangladesh to keep out “criminals and migrants”
• Bulgaria is currently building a fence along the border with Turket topped with razor wire also to keep out the wave of refugees and migrants.
• Britain is also talking about building a 2-km fence in Calais France around the opening of the channel tunnel to keep out migrants

• 

Some other walls:

1. Hadrian’s Wall- to keep barbarian Scots away from Roman Britain
2. Great Wall of China- also against barbarians.
3. Belfast- walls between Catholic and protestor neighbourhoods, still exist but of more of a tourist attraction now
4. Berlin Wall- communist east Berlin from democratic west Berlin

5.