The United States has just joined the ranks of North and South Korea, communist-era Germany… The United States has just joined the ranks of North and South Korea, communist-era Germany and dynastic China, as President Bush signed a bill yesterday authorizing the construction of 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The bill, which specifically authorizes the construction of double-layer fencing along a portion of the U.S.-Mexico border, is intended to cut down on illegal immigration and to improve border security between the United States and Mexico.

“We have a responsibility to enforce our laws. We have a responsibility to secure our borders. We take this responsibility serious,” the president said at the signing ceremony.

Serious.

While the bill itself offers no money for the fencing project, which will cover one third of the 2,100-mile border, a homeland security spending measure that the president approved earlier this month makes a $1.2 billion down payment toward the fence, according to the Associated Press.

$1.2 billion – for a fence.

And that’s only the down payment. Estimates are that the total cost of the project, which will be completed by 2008, will be $6 billion.

The bill was conveniently passed into law just weeks before Election Day, no doubt as a desperate attempt for the Republican Party to present a unified, tough-on-immigration platform.

While the fence might cut down on the number of illegal immigrants crossing the border to the United States, many view the project as a symbolic statement.

“It’s not at all feasible. It’s a statement for election day,” Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) said to The Washington Post.

In our opinion, $1.2 billion is a lot to pay for a symbol, especially when that money could be put toward more effective immigration measures.

To begin, construction of the fence will be difficult, if not impossible, in some parts of the border, as construction crews will work around rivers, streams, cliffs and mountains.

Secondly, an expansive border might slow down immigrants, but without having increased immigration officials actually patrolling the fence, they will still find ways to come over. It is not difficult to scale a fence.

Perhaps our money would be better spent on a feasible plan for dealing with immigration, rather than a grand gesture that will ultimately serve as no more than a scare-tactic.

The president seemed to be on the right track with immigration, with his support of a guest-worker program, a bipartisan proposal that would offer illegal immigrants a chance to gain citizenship.

But elections got close, Republicans got worried and the guest worker bill got shelved.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we are concerned with the implications of this fence. While the fence itself is an empty, inefficient proposal for controlling illegal immigration, the statement it is making is loaded. America was founded as a country that promised to be a safe haven for immigrants; now we are resorting to medieval tactics to keep them out.

Mexican president Vicente Fox has compared the fence proposal to a new Berlin Wall – and he might not be that far from the truth.