White House Dismisses Suggestion to Wall Off Canada

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest has shrugged off a proposal by Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker that the United States build a wall along its border with Canada to prevent illegal immigrants entering the country.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – Walker, a three-times-elected governor of the US state of Wisconsin, made the suggestion of building a wall along the Canadian border on Sunday, but Earnest made clear that no one in the Obama administration took the idea seriously.

"The coordination efforts and information intelligence sharing between the United States and Canada was further ramped up [in 2014]," Earnest told a gaggle of reporters on Air Force One accompanying President Barack Obama to Anchorage, Alaska on Monday for a conference on global warming.

"I’m not aware of anybody in this administration who believes that that should be a top priority."

Instead, the Obama spokesman had high praise for the continuing close security cooperation between the United States and Canada.

"I can tell you that the United States has a very strong national security relationship with Canada. We cooperate on a wide variety of issues," he said. "And we certainly value that relationship, and that relationship extends to the security of our long-undefended border."

Walker had been tipped to become a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, but his campaign has never taken off and he continues to lag in the low single digits in most state and national polls.