Politics

Scott Walker: Building a US-Canada border wall is ‘a legitimate issue’

Screenshot via HBO/Game of Thrones

By Nik DeCosta-Klipa @NikDeCostaKlipa

August 30, 2015

1 minute to read

For all the talk about a southern border wall (ahem, Mr. Trump), Scott Walker has an additional concern: Canada.

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Given his support for building a U.S.-Mexico border wall to protect against terrorist threats, the Wisconsin governor was asked on NBC’s Meet the Press by host Chuck Todd if he wanted to build a northern border wall.

Walker, a Republican candidate for president, said a U.S.-Canadian border “is a legitimate issue for us to look at.’’

“Some people have asked us about that in New Hampshire,’’ Walker said. “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.’’

As The Daily Beastpointed out last year, many GOP lawmakers had cited the threat of Islamic terrorists coming into the country through Mexico as reason to build a southern fence — despite little evidence of such a threat.

Walker has repeatedly echoed those southernly concerns, supporting construction of a wall like Israel’s “500-mile fence’’ — which, at 430 miles long, is a bit of a misnomer.

Nevertheless, the International Boundary between the U.S. and Canada is the longest international border in the world.

While the entire 5,525-mile border has been cleared to the ground, as this CGP Grey video explains, building a northern wall would be, to put it modestly, difficult. The boundary is rife with wilderness mountain ranges, zig-zags, and disputed territories.

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Besides, there’s evidence that a northern wall wouldn’t be completely impenetrable, particularly against wildlings.