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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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In Our View: Tear Down Wall Plan

Trump’s proposed barrier along southern U.S. border fanciful, costly, ineffective

The Columbian
Published:

In a fit of politics Tuesday, President Donald Trump backed down from demands that a spending bill to keep the government running include a down payment on a wall across the United States’ southern border.

While the decision apparently opens the way for a deal that will avoid a government shutdown on Saturday, it does little to clear up the muddled discussion about the cost and effectiveness of the wall proposal. In short, Trump’s desire to build a 2,000-mile barrier between the United States and Mexico is an example of government embracing the fanciful at the expense of the practical.

So, allow us for now to focus upon the practical. Upon what can be done and how much it would cost and what would be the most effective way to stem the tide of illegal immigration into this country. The United States has a right and, indeed, a duty, to manage immigration and to control who is allowed to cross the border; without secure borders, a nation loses its identity.

That is a message that resonated with many Trump voters, who seized upon the promise of a border wall as one of his primary campaign pledges. But reality can have a sobering effect upon campaign promises, and Trump is finding reality to be a difficult labyrinth to navigate.

He has insisted that a wall can be built for $10 billion or less, eschewing estimates that it would cost more than $20 billion. There currently is fencing along 670 miles of the border between the United States and Mexico, which was built in accordance with the Bush administration’s Secure Fence Act of 2006. That cost $2.4 billion and, experts say, was mostly constructed in the least costly areas. In 2015, Ronald Vitiello of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told a Senate committee: “It’s a lot more expensive than we expected when we started, and it was much more difficult.”

A wall would exponentially increase those costs. Not only would construction be more expensive, but the fence was largely built upon public land while a 2,000-mile wall would require that land be purchased from private owners.

Equally important is the question of effectiveness. In January, Department of Homeland Security chief John Kelly said: “A physical barrier will not do the job. If you build a wall, you would still have to back that wall up with patrolling by human beings, by sensors, by observation devices.” With or without a wall, boots will be needed on the ground; increasing such patrols would be a more effective expenditure than casting billions of dollars upon a monolith.

And the question remains about the source of those billions. Trump has said that Mexico will pay for the wall, an absurd promise with no foundation in reality. He has recommended that a tariff be placed upon goods from Mexico — which means that American consumers will pay — and on Sunday he tweeted: “Eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early, Mexico will be paying, in some form, for the badly needed border wall.”

Despite his campaign rhetoric, Trump has no idea how to force Mexico to pay for a wall. Which means that Americans must weigh the value of its construction against how that money can be better spent.

There are myriad answers for that, myriad ways to make America great. Border patrols and immigration enforcement. Family-wage jobs and job training for Americans. Education and deficit reduction. Any of those would be more practical than Trump’s fanciful border wall, a proposal that fails in terms of both cost and effectiveness.

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