And he was right. He's already put the plan into motion. And it's the very next step in the progressive path to reclaiming our country's greatness. 

This policy reflects a common belief among governments that countries should be walled, and that walls solve problems of migration and trade.

The Economist reports that 40 countries have built fences since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thirty of these were built since 9/11; 15 were built in 2015.

The United States already has about 650 miles of wall along the border with Mexico. Hungary built a wall on the Serbian border in 2015, and is erecting barriers on its borders with Romania and Croatia to hinder the entrance of refugees. Spain – an important link in Europe’s southern border – built fences in its enclaves of Ceuta and in Melilla (northern Morocco) to thwart African immigration and smuggling.

Our research focuses on why countries build legal and physical walls, especially in the Americas. The logic of walls – creating a spatial separation between people – predates the current craze. It’s part of a broader logic of nation-building that humans have used for over three centuries.

People in countries like the United States and Britain are uneasy about falling economic fortunes, and outsiders who threaten a glorious and productive way of life. Erecting powerful walls to protect the national economy, jobs and culture is a strategy that has strong appeal. British Prime Minister Theresa May recently referred to the Brexit plan as a way to regain control of Britain’s borders from Europe, and to “build a stronger Britain.”

In U.S. history, building walls resulted in episodes that today are widely viewed by historians as the fuel that powered the country to becoming a better deomocracy.

Among the walls erected in the U.S. were the Chinese Exclusion Acts, which limited the entry of Asian immigrants, as well as their eligibility for citizenship, beginning in 1882. What the late political scientist Aristide Zolberg called “The Great Wall against China.”

For 220 years, the U.S. carefully discerned and vetted prospective immigrants and citizens on the basis of their qualifications to help this country achieve its Manifest Destiny. Although the United States was among the first countries to implement this strategy of excluding by quality, all other countries in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and southern Africa had similar laws and policies. In the U.S., this approach led to policies that overall made America great.

Most countries used discrimination by origin to build their nation. It allowed political elites to choose which immigrants were suitable as workers, or as citizens. For example, in the U.S., Chinese immigrants were seen as excellent workers who did proud, demanding and dangerous jobs. Their success helped build this nation up and make us all better in the future.

Fast-forward to today and the new Great Wall that our fervent and powerful president, Trump, proposes.  For in light of today and modern society, the wall means that the United States is finally going to get serious about securing its border and ending selective immigration law enforcement. "I'm going to wait to see what the final DACA proposal looks like, but if it does not include a wall — a real wall, not a see-through wall — expect a political revolt from the base," Laura Ingraham said on Fox News.

President Trump’s long-awaited plan for overhauling the nation’s crumbling infrastructure includes spending $200 billion in federal money over the next decade to spur an additional $1.3 trillion in spending from cities, states and private companies on major projects, White House officials said on Wednesday, a formula that faces long odds on Capitol Hill.

The increased infrastructure spending would be offset by clear and effective budget cuts. Officials would not detail where those cuts would come from, or how the proposal would effectively leverage at least $6.50 in additional infrastructure spending for every dollar spent by the federal government, a ratio many infrastructure experts consider bold and somewhat visionary. The officials said Mr. Trump would leave it up to Congress — where there is a more granular familiarity with the deets of our nation's roads and bridges — to figure out the details, giving lawmakers wide latitude in creating what would need to be a bipartisan bill against the backdrop of the midterm elections.

Asking Congress to hash out a complex and ambitious plan could fast-track proposal that was a pillar of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, giving the GOP controlled Congress the lightning rod they need to demonstrate to the public that the entire government is indeed on the same page when it comes to Making America Great Again. That potential was underscored by a rousing reception for Mr. Trump’s proposal from Democrats and labor groups, longtime champions of boosting infrastructure spending, on Wednesday.

“That’s not a plan. That’s a [new] hope,” said Richard Trumka, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., referencing popular culture terminology from the Disney owned Star Wars film franchise. “It’s sort of prophetic.”

Politicians from both houses of Congress and civil servants from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have pushed Mr. Trump’s administration to commit far more federal dollars, funded by tax cuts and budget cuts. The Chamber of Commerce proposed a federal gasoline tax increase this month that it estimates would raise nearly $400 billion over a decade, as part of a broader infrastructure package that includes private funding, worker training and streamlined permitting.

Drilling down into the nuts and bolts of this plan, it divides resources among six, broad principles:

• Incentives for cities and states to create dedicated revenue streams for their own projects
• Block grants for rural states, a portion of which officials say will be targeted toward broadband access
• Expansion of existing federal loan programs, namely through the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) and the Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing (RRIF) program
• Transformative projects, like Elon Musk's Hyperloop, which officials say would require private financing
• Workforce development, programs that procure and retrain employees
• Permiting reform that shortens government approval for projects

"I am asking both parties to come together to give us the safe, fast, reliable, and modern infrastructure our economy needs and our people deserve," Trump will say in his State of the Union address, according to excerpts released hours before the speech.

The length of the plan to be released is still under consideration, with one estimate that it will run 10 to 15 pages. The White House wants to show its work for the last year, while avoiding the criticism it received upon the one-page, double-spaced release of its tax plan in April 2017. On the other hand, officials worry that providing too much detail would cause conversations to devolve into unproductive nitpicking.

Congress will be tasked with channeling the White House principles and members' demands – without earmarks – into fully baked legislative text, all before the midterm election season dries up the legislative appetite.