An "inhuman" wall?

I am, to be clear, a strong supporter of liberal immigration policies.  I am entirely sympathetic to those who want desperately to enter the United States.  I think that the United States benefits greatly from immigration; I want more of it.  I support President Bush's "path to citizenship" proposal.  It is not clear to me that high-wage American manufacturing jobs have any moral priority over jobs for those living in the developing world.  And so on.

That said, Cardinal Martino's statement -- to which Michael P. links here -- comparing a partial border-fence between the United States and Mexico with the Berlin Wall is, I believe, strikingly obtuse.  A wall designed to keep people in a slave-state is hardly the same as a wall intended (wisely or not) to stem the flow of illegal in-migration.

This statement strikes me as a regrettable example of a Church leader moving from those crucial moral principles which must be proclaimed courageously -- e.g., solidarity with the poor, and with those in other countries -- to matters of policy concerning which Church officials enjoy no special competence.  Given the givens regarding immigration in our present situation, it seems quite an overreach to say that a fence in hard-to-police areas is "inhuman" (even if, in the end, not well conceived).