The European Version of the US Wall Against Immigration

“We’ll build a big, beautiful wall”.

These were the words used by the former American president Donald Trump when referring to his solution to stop Mexico – US illegal border crossing and immigration. Many Americans voted him for that promise alone and the idea of stopping immigration by the most expensive, yet rudimentary means possible excited the electors.

The wall has been started, 727 km of it already being built, but it has never been finished during his mandate and, according to the current American president Joe Biden, the works on it won’t continue.

The European version of the Mexican – American wall

Cyprus has just informed the European Commission it wants to build a big, nice wall at its Northern border. It is not its first attempt to build it, but the former idea in February 2020 was for the wall to be floating. The European Commission rejected the idea, now it has to decide upon the new one. Still a wall, but this time on land.

In fact, it’s more like a fence, as it will be built from barbed-wire.

According to local media, the wall will have an initial length of 11 km which, as the Cyprus authorities hope for, will stop the migrants from entering the European soil.

The number of the immigrants which arrive each year on the divided island is constantly increasing, most of them fleeing from Syria and Afghanistan. From less than 3,000 immigrants in 2016, in 2019 their number exceeded 10,000.

Is this wall going to solve the immigration problems for Cyprus? We doubt that, but if they feel they make some progress with it by building a wall, then they will try that solution as well.

The European Union will certainly offer a clear position on that subject. Probably, the politics will prevail over the need of Cyprus to stop immigration, but we’ll see.