The reason I don't care about the wall is simple: Yes, our immigration laws are complicated and need reform, but people shouldn't be crossing the border illegally, full-stop. That's why we have laws. A country that selectively enforces its laws is a country where the government can imprison you on a whim (because you've broken a rarely enforced law that they can use against you at will), and historically such countries haven't been nice places to live. So as a basis, you want and need a government that consistently enforces laws, and if the laws are bad, you change them -- which is less likely to happen if lax enforcement eases the pain of the bad laws. So how do I move from "we need to enforce our laws, and change them if they're bad" to "I don't care about the wall"? Simple: whether or not we have the wall, immigration laws need to be enforced as they are written (love 'em or hate 'em), which means that until the law is changed anyone caught crossing will be deported anyway. At the point that the law is changed, people who want to cross will be allowed through as specified in the law. With this philosophy as a background, the wall is relatively meaningless in a practical sense, although I do admit that it does have some symbolic weight. I have always had far more concern for pragmatic thought than symbolism and idealism (which probably led me to engineering), and I'm assuming that building a wall would reduced long-term border patrolling costs to compensate for the cost to build it, and so this leaves me in a place where it's a wash and I don't really care whether or not they build it. And yes, I have been called an emotionless robot before ... I took it as a complement :).
One more note: I'm not saying that I expect the government to achieve perfect monitoring -- just like it would be impossible to catch all speeders, it would be impossible to catch all illegal border crossings -- but I am saying that when the government does know that a law has been broken, it should apply a consistent response that is compliant with the laws that have been passed by a congress and signed by a president.
One more note: I'm not saying that I expect the government to achieve perfect monitoring -- just like it would be impossible to catch all speeders, it would be impossible to catch all illegal border crossings -- but I am saying that when the government does know that a law has been broken, it should apply a consistent response that is compliant with the laws that have been passed by a congress and signed by a president.