by Da Hsuan Feng
July 5, 2022
Ever since I returned to the Texas from East Asia in 2017, the “crises” on our southern border is constant and ubiquitous. Even during his presidential campaign, Donald Trump already using very harsh words to describe the “illegal” immigrants that is pouring into the United States’ southern borders. Since Texas has the longest borders with Mexico, it is not surprising that much of the problem is with Texas!
As a physicist, the aim of our discipline is to always find the “root causes” of a problem. This is why Newton came up with his F = ma equation to describe the dynamics of motion, Maxwell came up with his Maxwell equations to describe how electromagnetic waves behave and how a bunch of physicists in the 1920 Solvay conference came up with the dynamics of the microworld known as quantum mechanics.
So what is the root cause of the problem of the US southern border?
As everyone knows well, after World War II, the United States initiated a massive fund to rebuild “Western” Europe, known as the Marshall Plan. This Plan completely transformed so spectacularly Western Europe,economically, politically and maybe even culturally! It also allowed the United States to dip deep into the lucrative Western Europe market, and in return, assisted the economic growth of the United States! So, in a sense, the United States after WWII, quickly recognize the root of the Western Europe challenges and made a decisive policy to ensure that it could mitigate them as quickly as possible.
Yet, there apparently no one in Washington D.C. would could anticipate that the United States southern border could one day become a problem.
Ironically, it was President Trump, who in his mindless manner came up with the “Southern Wall” concept for the 1,954 miles of border between the United States. In his mind, the wall could prevent the incoming hordes of migrants entering the United States from the South, whether they are Mexicans, Hondurans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, or what have you.
Just a couple weeks ago, 53 migrants died in San Antonio, Texas, in an abandoned truck. One could only wonder what drove these people to want to risk their lives to go on a trip like this?
The answer is quite simple. It is that the condition at their homelands must be so intolerable that drove these people to take such high risks to find better lives for themselves and their family.
Therefore, to mitigate the root of the problem is clearly not simply to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. Interestingly, many millenniums ago, China built a northern wall, commonly known as “The Great Wall”, to prevent the northern hordes from entering China. In hindsight, other than many millenniums later it became a tourists’ site, it did not stop the northern hordes!
Indeed, it is that the economic situation in these countries in the south of the United States is so dismal that if the United States as the most powerful nation in the world and is geographically situated in the northern end of these nations can assist them to grow their economy, and thus the quality of lives for their people, these people would not want to leave their homelands.
What is clearly needed to solve the United States, as the most powerful nations in the world today, to mitigate its southern border problem of today is for the country to come up with a grand challenge solution of rebuilding the economic infrastructure of all its southern neighbors.
In a sense, what is needed is for the United States government to set up a “Marshall-Plan-II” whose intention is to assist its southern neighbors to greatly enhance its economic infrastructure for the betterment of their people!
Quite recently, following China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), President Biden and the G7 nations wanted to initiate a western version of the BRI. For the United States, the “low hanging fruit” for this project is to build an infrastructure in its southern neighbors. As the old Chinese saying, “to become rich, you first build roads.” In the 21st century vernacular, it should be “to become rich, you first build the high-speed-raid!” This is why China and Laos, one of the poorest Southeast Asian nations, built and now operated the first 1000 kilometers high-speed-rail from Kunming China to Vientiane Laos. This railway will jumpstart the economy of Laos!
Just as “Marshall-Plan-I” clearly had a transformative success in eastern Europe, it is possible that “Marshall-Plan-II” could also work in Central America!