Originally Posted by SackAttack
But, again, to the extent we have an immigration problem, it isn't, really, a porous border issue. A wall isn't going to keep out people who overstay their visas. You'd be spending a ridiculous amount of money to tackle a fraction of the problem. A wall amounts to a rhetorical device and a red herring to convince the voters that you're Doing Something Serious About It. That's all.
Which is, ironically, exactly what the DAPA stuff was all about. "Let's focus first on those who commit violent crimes and those without families, because Congress isn't spending enough to deport 11 million people in one go, and priorities must be set." And conservatives squalled about how outrageously unconstitutional it was that the executive directed an office with insufficient resources to DEPORT ALL THE PEOPLE to prioritize. And went to court. Won a victory at the appellate level which the Supreme Court was unable to resolve due to staffing.
But, y'know, that's exactly what was tried - "start with the illegals without kids and go from there."
Right. My point is that the terrorism issue conflates directly, because the 9/11 terrorists attacked our immigration system at its weakest point, and that point wasn't the border. It was the visa system. They entered the country legally, and while a better vetting system might have denied them those visas to begin with, they didn't just sneak across the Rio Grande. And that's true of most of our illegal immigrants - visa overstays make up a larger percentage of the whole than border jumpers.
I think you'll find if you pursue the other measures first, you'll find the Wall essentially unnecessary.
It's obvious to you that it will because you take it as an article of faith that most illegal immigrants are people swimming the Rio Grande, and that's not true. We've been over the visa thing already, but even without that, there's money in human smuggling, and part of how people, drugs and guns have come across our border is a tunnel system originating on the other side. Building the Wall isn't going to stop that. You're still going to have to play whack-a-mole, and you'll be doing it across a 2,000 mile border.
Israel is a tiny-ass country. The wall they built is 1/5 the size of what you'd need on our southern border, and there were other factors in play. The Israeli military pursued Palestinian militants into Palestinian territories - what you'd call a "forward defense" - helped, but one should also remember that the terrorist activity from Palestine was state-sponsored; when Palestinian leadership agreed a truce with Israel, that activity diminished.
Again, start with the other stuff. The Wall is largely symbolic; you'll get way more mileage out of the money spent if you pursue the other issues with the immigration system.
A few things here:
1) there's the idea of the "first mile" and the "last mile" costs. We spent $2.4 billion on a border fence approximately the length of Israel's West Bank wall, and that was on topography that most agree was the easiest on which to build something like that. As the topography changes, your cost is going to go up.
2) The initial appropriation from Congress for the stretch of fencing erected under President Bush was $1.5 billion. On the easiest stretch of land on which to build, and with fencing rather than a "big, beautiful Wall," we saw 50% cost overruns. The border fence as constructed was supposed to be double-layered, with a patrol corridor between the fences. Much of the barrier is single-layered, even with those cost overruns.
3) When $1T costs are thrown around, it isn't "let's cut a $1 trillion check right now." There are several costs involved, and not all of them are directly materials costs to construct a wall. That's part of it, to be sure; the Wall itself is estimated to cost $25 billion. That's materials and, depending on who you talk to, labor. That also doesn't account for cost overruns and cost differences between using military labor and private contractors (when construction of the existing fence switched from National Guardsmen to private contractors, costs went up by about 60% per mile).
You're also going to have to factor land acquisition costs. What you budget for and what you end up having to pay landowners can be quite different.
Then, after the wall is constructed - and remember, given topographical changes, that wall is still going to be permeable in places - you get to start factoring in maintenance, staffing, and everything that goes along with that. Building that wall is not a one-time cost. Will it be $1 trillion over the life of the wall? Maybe not. Depends on how carried away Trump gets (remember, nobody builds a bigger, more beautiful wall than he would). Depends on how lucky you get on maintenance costs, what sort of inflation you get over the years increasing those costs. But I think over a 25 year period, between construction, maintenance and staffing, $200 billion is probably the low end of what you can expect.
"The flow" is a net negative on our southern border, and has been for a few years now. Total deportations under President Obama are markedly higher than they were under President Bush, and some have estimated total deportations under President Obama to be greater than the entirety of those conducted by the various Executive Branches in the 20th century.
The total number of illegal immigrants in the country has remained essentially static since President Obama took office, which is unprecedented since Ulysses S. Grant. The narrative from the right is that DAPA proves he just wants to give the country away to Mexican illegals, but the reality carries quite a bit more nuance.
The Wall is a rhetorical tool that might convince our own citizens of Just How Serious We Are, but it would not substantially impact illegal immigration to this country, and particularly for the cost it would incur, we can do better.
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