Agustin Torres | Mr. Bush, tear down that wall!

On June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan gave a famous speech at Germany's Brandenburg Gate, where he challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. And, just four days ago, President Bush signed a bill authorizing the construction of a 700-mile fence along the border with Mexico. Now, it's Bush's wall that's being challenged.

From the Mexican perspective, President Vicente Fox has called the fence "shameful for the United States." In a press conference, Fox said Bush's proposal lacks vision due to its entanglement with electoral politics. He also noted that the wall will have a great impact on both sides of the border, not just north of the Rio Grande.

Similarly, President-elect Felipe Calderon said the fence is completely unnecessary and harms U.S.-Mexico relations. Calderon's upcoming White House visit next month will surely have some awkward conversations. With a difficult electoral process behind him and a harder political transition to come, he will now have to directly confront the immigration problem.

Mexican ex-President Ernesto Zedillo, director of Yale University's Center for the Study of Globalization, held a press conference for Latin American journalists on the issue. Congress' decision, he said, "is certainly indicative of these negative reactions that are sometimes had against phenomena inherent to interdependence. A wall is not congruent with an integral plan to solve the immigration problem."

The policy has received criticism from people around the globe, not just Mexico. Twenty-seven members of the Organization of American States, Amnesty International, the United Nations and the Roman Catholic Church have all expressed concern. Even within the United States, a recent survey by Opinion Research Corp. found that 53 percent opposed the construction of a fence.

To all this criticism, the response has been insufficient.

The security-driven, demagogic discourse of "protecting the American people" wrongly assumes that immigrants are dangerous and that a border fence is reducing this non-existent danger.

"The wall is the natural result of the answer to the immigration problem since the 9/11 attacks," said Rogelio Cortes, an international-relations major at Mexico's well-regarded Monterrey Institute of Technology.

The reality is that most immigrants are not delinquents or terrorists but hard-working individuals looking for a job that they were unable to find in their home country. In their idyllic search toward the American dream, they are willing to travel by land, air or sea until they accomplish their objective. A wall will hardly deter them -it will just force them to take alternative routes and greater risks.

On the other hand, real dangerous people that threaten the lives of Americans will continue to do so, and with all their immigration documents up to date.

Sadly, it seems like the wall proposal is little more than election-year politicking.

According to The Washington Post, "Only a fraction of the billions needed to finance the fence has been appropriated, and much of the construction might not be feasible." Moreover, it's not clear whether the next Congress will approve all the funds designated for the fence. The approval of the Secure Fence Act appears to be more of a symbolic, electoral measure than a real, practical one.

But regardless of discussion about the actual effectiveness of the fence, there are deeper, culturally driven implications. "I find it worrisome because it symbolizes not only a physical barrier between Mexico and the United States but also a growing unwillingness to welcome Mexicans who desire sincere relations with the United States," said Jose Muniz, a Mexican undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

And so we reach the ultimate irony. The real wall is symbolic, blocking a true solution to the immigration problem. And that wall still lies untouched - Bush's proposal is just adding another brick.

Agustin Torres is an Engineering sophomore from Monterrey, Mexico. His e-mail address is torres@dailypennsylvanian.com. The Monday Burrito appears on Mondays.

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