No word yet on whether he expects Canada to pay for it, but a Republican presidential candidate wants a border wall along the 49th parallel.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election, has urged the U.S. to erect a wall along its northern border with Canada.
Ramaswamy said the wall would necessary to prevent illegal immigration and crime from spilling over from Canada, which he claimed is facing a border crisis of its own.
Ramaswamy’s statement came after New Hampshire Republican Governor Chris Sununu announced the creation of a Northern Border Alliance Task Force to patrol the 58-mile stretch of the state’s border with Canada.
Sununu said the task force is a response to the federal government’s failure to secure the northern border, where illegal crossings have increased by more than 800% in the past year, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.
Ramaswamy, who visited the Canada-U.S. border earlier this month and posted a video on TikTok showing how easy it is to cross illegally, said he supports Sununu’s initiative and wants to extend it to the entire 5,525-mile border with Canada.
He said he also wants to finish the wall on the southern border with Mexico and deploy military forces there to stop illegal immigration.
Ramaswamy’s proposal has drawn criticism from Democrats and some Republicans, who say it is unrealistic, wasteful and harmful to the U.S.-Canada relationship.
According to U.S. authorities, the number of people who cross the border from Canada to the U.S. without authorization rose sharply last year.
CBP reported that they encountered 625 illegal border crossers between October 2021 and March 2022, a 47% increase from the same period in the previous year.
Most of the people who tried to enter the U.S. illegally were not Canadian citizens. Only 63 of them had Canadian passports, while the rest came from various countries.
Some of the illegal border crossers were involved in criminal activities or human smuggling operations. In March, U.S. border agents rescued six Indian nationals who were trying to cross the St. Regis River from Canada to New York state. They also arrested a U.S. citizen, Brian Lazore, who was allegedly involved in smuggling them.
U.S. border officials said they have noticed a notable increase of foreign nationals with criminal history leaving Canada.
The number of illegal entries into the U.S. from Canada is still much lower than the number of illegal entries into Canada from the U.S., especially through the now shuttered unofficial crossing point of Roxham Road.
