Finland, the newest member of NATO, has started constructing a 10ft tall, 124-mile wall topped with barbed wire along its eastern border with Russia. Surprisingly, despite the media's criticism of former President Donald Trump's plan for a wall on the southern US border, there has been little criticism of Finland's anti-Russian barrier, The National Pulse reported.
The decision to establish a hard border between Finland and Russia was taken by the Finnish government in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Finnish authorities have stated that the country needs to reduce its dependence on Russian border control, according to Jari Tolppanen, a Finnish Border Guard Brigadier General. This move was announced shortly after Finland's full NATO membership was confirmed two weeks ago, the outlet reported further.
According to Finnish border officials, a key purpose of the wall is to prevent illegal immigration from Russia. They aim to reduce the risk of Russia “ushering thousands of asylum-seekers – mostly from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Middle East nations" to cross the border, as occurred between 2015 and 2016. However, the numbers of illegal crossings along the Finnish-Russian border have been relatively low compared to the situation faced by the United States.
According to Reuters, Finland detected only 30 cases of illegal crossing in 2022, while the Russian authorities reported detecting 800 people trying to cross the border. In comparison, the United States had over 206,000 encounters at the southern border in November 2021 alone, based on lower-end, official figures.
Finland is not the only country that has resorted to building a border wall for security reasons. Poland and the Baltic States have already built international borders to address security concerns. In 2015, during the peak of Europe's migrant crisis, the Hungarian government erected hard border fencing to control the influx of migrants, The National Pulse reported.
According to a Department of Homeland Security report in 2018, during then-President Donald Trump's tenure:
Walls Work. When it comes to stopping drugs and illegal aliens from crossing our borders, border walls have proven to be extremely effective. Border security relies on a combination of border infrastructure, technology, personnel and partnerships with law enforcement at the state, local, tribal, and federal level. For example, when we installed a border wall in the Yuma Sector, we have seen border apprehensions decrease by 90 percent. In San Diego, we saw on Sunday that dilapidated, decades-old barriers are not sufficient for today’s threat and need to be removed so new – up to 30 foot wall sections can be completed.
"Finland’s project is expected to be concluded by the end of June 2023," noted The National Pulse.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden no sooner got sworn into office than he ordered the border wall being built by Trump to cease. Then, he signed a stack of executive orders, many of which were aimed at reversing Trump's strict border enforcement and security policies and executive orders.
Though Trump had to fight federal courts and a Republican-controlled Congress to get the wall funded, he finally did and, before he was blocked from office, managed to get nearly 460 miles of fence built.
Border Patrol agents were quick to point out that in sectors where the wall was built, illegal immigration slowed to a trickle. It also allowed them to focus more resources on sectors of the border that remained without a wall so that before the 2020 election was stolen, human- and drug smuggling were at historic lows.
All Biden and the Democrat-controlled Congress needed to do was finish the wall, but instead, Biden and Democratic leaders decided to pander to their party’s hard Marxist left. As such, today, there is historically high illegal immigration on the border with Mexico along with a massive influx of fentanyl that is killing tens of thousands of Americans annually.
But after Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden and Democrats are now willing to spend a similar amount of money to defend that country’s borders, which is beyond outrageous.
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