US BORDER POLITICS PREDATES TRUMP

R epublican presidential candidate Donald Trump delivered a one-hour address, last month, on the danger of illegal immigration to the United States.

- TDG NETWORK

His stage was the US-Mexico border in Arizona and the set piece of his performance was the border wall.

The message was simple: with their border policy, Democrats have "unleashed a deadly plague of migrant crime". Trump has ratcheted up the tensions on immigration further since then, repeating wild conspiracy theories about Haitian immigrants eating pets and, more recently, claiming migrants are "attacking villages and cities all throughout the Midwest", according to www.

theconversation.com Trump has repeatedly stressed that the US needs a closed border and a walled border.

Today we will dig deeper and find out the long history of wall-building advocacy.

HISTORY The US-Mexico border wall, which is currently around 700 miles in length in various stretches, has loomed large in American politics in recent decades, especially since the 2016 US presidential campaign.

The origin of the border wall begins in the early 1900s, when the US Immigration Service and other federal agencies called for the construction of barriers at the border.

Congress answered their appeal by adopting an act in 1935 that authorised the secretary of state to construct and maintain fences between the US and Mexico. For decades following its adoption, US officials stood before Congress almost yearly, asking for funding for the construction of border fences.