Post: #1

A lot of talk about building a wall on our Southern border. I can clearly see that many that believe this, have never seen our Southern border. What I would like to tell my Northern Brethren is this: A wall was already attempted by George Bush Jr., it cost 2 million per mile, it only covers roughly 1/3 of our border with Mexico. We are still paying 50 million dollars a year for its upkeep, as building and maintaining walls are not cheap.

Flying welders and other construction workers and their tools, earth-moving equipment, temporary housing, food and water, the materials themselves all to remote regions far from roads or civilization is a very expensive undertaking and a logistical nightmare.

Anyone ever looked at a map of the state of Texas? Look at its jagged, meandering southern border. That is the Rio Grande river my friends. It is not a straight line. Water follows the path of least resistance, not the path that would be easiest to build a wall on. The wall would have to be built in a straight line for various reasons. I don't have a way of calculating, for it is impossible, all the private property that abuts the Rio Grande, that would have to be bought through eminent domain by the US taxpayer.

This alone would probably outstrip the cost of the actual wall itself.

Other parts of the border cross through uninhabitable terrain like deserts, and rocky mountanious regions. The wall that exists now can just be walked around as it starts and stops arbitrarily. Neither is it uniform, it has several different designs and dimensions and it is routinely gone over, under and through. Only by illegal immigrants and drugs though, not the species whos habitat previously existed on both sides.

The US war on drugs has been a complete and absolute failure with countless lives ruined and billions and billions of dollars wasted. Our country is awash with drugs, cartels, and gangs as it ever was. Prohibition in the US has created criminal organizations in Mexico and Columbia that are larger than their prospective governments. At one time Pablo Escobar offered to pay off Columbia's entire, massive, foreign debt if they would just let him be. When the US accuses those countries of being soft on crime and drugs their response is always this: We are only responding to demand in the US, if your country didn't have the largest and most lucrative cocaine market in the world, we wouldn't be growing and exporting cocaine to the US.

Therein lies the solution to the problem of illegal immigration. As any economist can tell you life is based on incentives. People do what they are incentivized to do. They transport drugs to the US because they know they can become wildy rich and powerful in doing so. Ending Prohibition would end the economic incentive.

Eliminating the incentives for illegal immigration is the answer not an expensive wall, built by illegal alien labor, and paid for by you and me.

Workers come here for jobs and they stay because they know they can. Why don't we just make it illegal to hire illegal immigrants? Oh, it already is illegal to hire undocumented aliens? Then why are they still coming? Because the US is not enforcing laws currently on the books. Funny, I, as a US citizen, have to follow every single law on the books, including jaywalking, or I will be thrown in jail.

These illegal aliens are allowed to stay because it drives down the wage that an American worker can demand. That is the real reason the elites, which Donald and Hillary are both lifelong members, need cheap, illegal, easily exploited labor.

Not to stay in business, no, but to reap gross and illegal profits at the expense of the American laborer.

Oh, but the hotels and the restaurants will all be shut down. No, they won't. They will just have to pay more for labor or reduce illegally inflated profits. Oh, but they pick our fruit and vegetables and our grocery stores will be empty. No, they won't. They will have to pay more for labor or reduce illegally inflated profits. Oh, but we won't be able to build a huge wall across mountains and valleys, in the middle of a desert and along the Rio Grande River.

OK, they are probably right about that last one.

Post: #2

I agree with most of what you're saying , but I don't think Trump actually plans on building a wall. It was more of a campaign rallying cry to attract voters (and I don't blame him for that) who are sick of illegal immigration.

Post: #3

1989 miles of US-Mexico border
Israels border wall is more than 403 miles.

Yes its unlikely to have a full-on concrete barrier in place but lets say you put triple fences up, have actual border guards and stations. Whats the cost of un-managed immigration?

Post: #4

I think it's more of a metaphor for nationalism and strengthening the US as opposed to globalism and foreign interests. It would be pretty pointless to build- there is a huge initial and running cost, and also the determined smuggling gangs would just tunnel under.

I agree with pretty much everything you're saying OP, the US is far too kind to illegal immigrants and removing the incentives to them would stop it. Why do you think all the migrants in Europe want to go to Germany or the UK? It's not because of weather, women or family. It's the £££££.

Post: #5

Theres no way a wall could actually be cost effective. I am more for paying off the Mexican government or manipulating them via their debt to secure northbound illegals from crossing.

Post: #6

The Mexican government? You mean, El Chapo?
The Cartels are the law of the land in most of the country, especially the lucrative human trafficking corridors that are adjacent to our border.
If they cannot control the Cartels they cannot control their own border.

Post: #7

Quote:A lot of talk about building a wall on our Southern border. I can clearly see that many that believe this, have never seen our Southern border. What I would like to tell my Northern Brethren is this: A wall was already attempted by George Bush Jr., it cost 2 million per mile, it only covers roughly 1/3 of our border with Mexico. We are still paying 50 million dollars a year for its upkeep, as building and maintaining walls are not cheap.

Flying welders and other construction workers and their tools, earth-moving equipment, temporary housing, food and water, the materials themselves all to remote regions far from roads or civilization is a very expensive undertaking and a logistical nightmare.

The first thing you do when you're working in rough country, unless it's extremely remote like certain mining properties in southwest Alaska, is build a road. Any mining company in the world with rough country experience could build a wide, stable road in short order.

It is not a logistical nightmare once you have a road.

Quote:Anyone ever looked at a map of the state of Texas? Look at its jagged, meandering southern border. That is the Rio Grande river my friends. It is not a straight line. Water follows the path of least resistance, not the path that would be easiest to build a wall on. The wall would have to be built in a straight line for various reasons.

You're going to have to explain that one. Humans have known how to build walls with corners in them for a long time. Even with tricky non-90 degree corners!

Also, think outside the box a bit regarding the Rio Grande. We don't need to build the wall absolutely directly 100% on the border. For fuck's sake, who cares if there's 30 meters of open ground between the wall and the border in some spots? Build the wall in the best place, don't slavishly try to follow a wiggly border.

Quote:I don't have a way of calculating, for it is impossible, all the private property that abuts the Rio Grande, that would have to be bought through eminent domain by the US taxpayer.

This alone would probably outstrip the cost of the actual wall itself.

Fine. This is a use of eminent domain that I actually agree with. Securing the nation is one of the damn few federal functions that they should have.

Quote:Other parts of the border cross through uninhabitable terrain like deserts, and rocky mountanious regions. The wall that exists now can just be walked around as it starts and stops arbitrarily. Neither is it uniform, it has several different designs and dimensions and it is routinely gone over, under and through. Only by illegal immigrants and drugs though, not the species whos habitat previously existed on both sides.

How they fucked up in the past isn't evidence that we can't do it right this time.

I'm sick of hearing about how it's some enormous technical challenge to build a fucking wall, even if it is in rough country. It just tells me the people making the claim don't know anything about what Americans have already actually done in the past, let alone any ability to make firm statements about current American abilities.

Humans have been making road cuts and building structures in mountains since before the advent of gunpowder. With relatively safe blasting explosives available, it is not an enormous challenge to work in mountains. There are many roads through the various mountain ranges in the US. The transcontinental railroad, which crossed gorges and mountains all across the continent, was completed almost 150 years ago. The engineering of such things is well understood. I was learning about road cuts in my freshman year, for God's sake. We know how to do it.

If you can build a big-ass road, you can build a wall. Period. I'm sure in some places the geology is tricky, but if we can build a safe pipeline across the very geologically active state of Alaska or tunnels like the Channel Tunnel or the Seikan Tunnel I'm pretty sure we can figure this out.

As far as cost, the cost of building a proper wall on the southern border is honestly trivial compared to how we blow money in other areas. It will cost much less than a single year of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. It will cost much less than going back to the moon. It would cost less than building a square mile of the average city. The Second Avenue subway is running 2.7 billion dollars per mile. Need I go on?

Whether people think it's a good idea or not, you can go ahead and put to bed the idea that we can't do it or that it would even be particularly hard or expensive in relative terms.

I think the wall would be much more effective than some here think. They're just gonna tunnel under it, huh. Good thing we have things like seismic sensors! It would take serious tunneling in any case, if we sink a deep wall footing. And if they do, so what? What's better, having the entire border exposed, or a couple hundred yards combined of tunnels that concentrate movements so they're much easier to detect with UAVs?

Post: #8

Trump has said the wall won't cover the entire border (such as mountains, etc). Doesn't matter in my opinion. Besides an improved barrier in places it's symbolic for strict enforcement of the border.

The wall is meaningless if agents aren't empowered to enforce things properly.

Post: #9

Crack down on employers and "remove the magnets" that bring them here, that solves the problem without a wall.

Post: #10

Why should we be forced to foot that enormous bill when laws already on the books exist to prevent illegals from living and working here? As well as the fact that unless we go underground down to the water table or bedrock, they will just tunnel under. We already have seismic sensors and we still find tunnels all the time. There are numerous drainage sewers that connect the countries that one can just walk under the Rio Grande. The answer is not a physical barrier, it is deterrence through already existing legislation. Make big business follow the same laws that ordinary citizens have to.

Post: #11

We have miles of unprotected border with Canada yet we are not drowning in Canadians. I mean we got stuck with Beiber, but I can live with that. The answer is there is no reason for them to come here.
Remove the incentives for illegal immigration is the crux of my arguement.

Post: #12

The wall was never about stopping Pablo from getting a job on a construction site. It's for keeping out criminals and terrorists.

Post: #13

I don't see why it's an either-or situation. Yes, we need to stop incentivizing people to come here illegally. And securing our southern border is a damn good idea too.

Canada isn't a crime-ridden shithole run by violent drug runners. If it ever gets that way, I'll be all for building a northern wall, too.

Post: #14

(09-22-2016 12:46 PM)Enigma Wrote:  The wall was never about stopping Pablo from getting a job on a construction site. It's for keeping out criminals and terrorists.

Criminals have ways and means to get in our country, most terrorists come from countries where we issue a large amount of student and H1B visas. It is easy for criminals and terrorists, it is the poor campesinos that can't get in without paying for the priviledge of a week long walk through inhospitable country.

Post: #15

(09-22-2016 11:40 AM)TigerMandingo Wrote:  I agree with most of what you're saying , but I don't think Trump actually plans on building a wall. It was more of a campaign rallying cry to attract voters (and I don't blame him for that) who are sick of illegal immigration.

Only problem with that is there are people who are supporting him primarily because of this campaign promise. Imagine their shock and awe when/if the physical wall doesn't get erected.

True enough politicians make promises, but it's almost like me advertising that I'm selling more affordable apples than my competition, but once I get you in the store I tell you that those apples aren't quite as cheap as I previously thought.

Post: #16

(09-22-2016 11:32 AM)AboveAverageJoe Wrote:  A lot of talk about building a wall on our Southern border. I can clearly see that many that believe this, have never seen our Southern border. What I would like to tell my Northern Brethren is this: A wall was already attempted by George Bush Jr., it cost 2 million per mile, it only covers roughly 1/3 of our border with Mexico. We are still paying 50 million dollars a year for its upkeep, as building and maintaining walls are not cheap.

Flying welders and other construction workers and their tools, earth-moving equipment, temporary housing, food and water, the materials themselves all to remote regions far from roads or civilization is a very expensive undertaking and a logistical nightmare.

Anyone ever looked at a map of the state of Texas? Look at its jagged, meandering southern border. That is the Rio Grande river my friends. It is not a straight line. Water follows the path of least resistance, not the path that would be easiest to build a wall on. The wall would have to be built in a straight line for various reasons. I don't have a way of calculating, for it is impossible, all the private property that abuts the Rio Grande, that would have to be bought through eminent domain by the US taxpayer.

This alone would probably outstrip the cost of the actual wall itself.

Other parts of the border cross through uninhabitable terrain like deserts, and rocky mountanious regions. The wall that exists now can just be walked around as it starts and stops arbitrarily. Neither is it uniform, it has several different designs and dimensions and it is routinely gone over, under and through. Only by illegal immigrants and drugs though, not the species whos habitat previously existed on both sides.

The US war on drugs has been a complete and absolute failure with countless lives ruined and billions and billions of dollars wasted. Our country is awash with drugs, cartels, and gangs as it ever was. Prohibition in the US has created criminal organizations in Mexico and Columbia that are larger than their prospective governments. At one time Pablo Escobar offered to pay off Columbia's entire, massive, foreign debt if they would just let him be. When the US accuses those countries of being soft on crime and drugs their response is always this: We are only responding to demand in the US, if your country didn't have the largest and most lucrative cocaine market in the world, we wouldn't be growing and exporting cocaine to the US.

Therein lies the solution to the problem of illegal immigration. As any economist can tell you life is based on incentives. People do what they are incentivized to do. They transport drugs to the US because they know they can become wildy rich and powerful in doing so. Ending Prohibition would end the economic incentive.

Eliminating the incentives for illegal immigration is the answer not an expensive wall, built by illegal alien labor, and paid for by you and me.

Workers come here for jobs and they stay because they know they can. Why don't we just make it illegal to hire illegal immigrants? Oh, it already is illegal to hire undocumented aliens? Then why are they still coming? Because the US is not enforcing laws currently on the books. Funny, I, as a US citizen, have to follow every single law on the books, including jaywalking, or I will be thrown in jail.

These illegal aliens are allowed to stay because it drives down the wage that an American worker can demand. That is the real reason the elites, which Donald and Hillary are both lifelong members, need cheap, illegal, easily exploited labor.

Not to stay in business, no, but to reap gross and illegal profits at the expense of the American laborer.

Oh, but the hotels and the restaurants will all be shut down. No, they won't. They will just have to pay more for labor or reduce illegally inflated profits. Oh, but they pick our fruit and vegetables and our grocery stores will be empty. No, they won't. They will have to pay more for labor or reduce illegally inflated profits. Oh, but we won't be able to build a huge wall across mountains and valleys, in the middle of a desert and along the Rio Grande River.

OK, they are probably right about that last one.

I generally agree with this. However, I think it would be pretty expensive to enforce the hiring of illegals.

Though having some insanely strict penalties for hiring illegals would scare the shit out of enough people.

Post: #17

(09-22-2016 12:54 PM)MY DETROIT PLAYAS Wrote:  

(09-22-2016 11:40 AM)TigerMandingo Wrote:  I agree with most of what you're saying , but I don't think Trump actually plans on building a wall. It was more of a campaign rallying cry to attract voters (and I don't blame him for that) who are sick of illegal immigration.

Only problem with that is there are people who are supporting him primarily because of this campaign promise. Imagine their shock and awe when/if the physical wall doesn't get erected.

True enough politicians make promises, but it's almost like me advertising that I'm selling more affordable apples than my competition, but once I get you in the store I tell you that those apples aren't quite as cheap as I previously thought.

Or even cheaper but mealy and full of worms like the absurd impentrable wall idea.

Post: #18

The Great Wall of China was built, albeit with slave labor, before dump, trucks, rail, etc.

And rebuilt.

Post: #19

Is this thread a joke?

Yes, we can build a wall across the entirety of the US-Mexican border. Don't you know it's the current year? And even if it wasn't the current year (but it is!)people have been building massive walls for centuries. For millennia.

Huge Walls. Amazing Walls. Wonderful Walls.

Will it be expensive? Depends how you think about it. Worst case scenario is probably around 25-30 billion USD to build the Wall and a few hundred million a year to maintain it.

Can me and you afford it? No. Can the US government afford it? Sure, $25bn is a rounding error on the US federal budget, and it's not like the entire cost will be incurred in a single year.

Will it be worth the trivial cost? Duh. How much do we spend on the military each year, like $600bn? And what has that gotten us lately? On the other hand, The Wall will end up costing less than $1b a year over the first 50 years of its existence if you amortize its construction costs for that period. What will that billion bucks a year give us? Oh, just stopping the demographic annihilation of the country and subsequent plunge into third world levels of decay and living standards.

I'll take it, even if it means we'll end up with one fewer aircraft carrier to support Our Greatest Ally in order to defray the cost.

Post: #20

(09-22-2016 12:54 PM)AboveAverageJoe Wrote:  

(09-22-2016 12:46 PM)Enigma Wrote:  The wall was never about stopping Pablo from getting a job on a construction site. It's for keeping out criminals and terrorists.

Criminals have ways and means to get in our country, most terrorists come from countries where we issue a large amount of student and H1B visas. It is easy for criminals and terrorists, it is the poor campesinos that can't get in without paying for the priviledge of a week long walk through inhospitable country.

So far several of your arguments boil down to "this isn't a perfect solution, so we shouldn't do it."

There is no one approach that's going to solve everything. There are pieces in the puzzle. Having a ridiculously porous southern border is an obvious security risk when we're being actively attacked by terrorists every few months.

Post: #21

I agree that the single biggest points of enforcement will be to harshly punish employers who hire illegals (especially the ones that do it en masse) and require a mandatory e-verify process along with disallowing anchor babies and cutting back our acceptance of refugees as a large amount of them aren't true refugees.

However, to argue that it's not possible and it's failed before without looking at any of the details or making a reasonable projection (or refuting other projections that are out there already), is complete folly.

Besides, even if the cost is significantly more than you think is reasonable, you have to factor in the long-term benefits and savings to the country from stemming the tide of illegal immigration. You can't think about just a few years of benefits, you have to think long-term.

EDIT: Make an argument that actually considers all the factors involved. Stuff like this is ridiculous. We have next to zero illegal immigration problem from our Northern border versus our southern border. Comparing the two is completely illogical:

(09-22-2016 12:42 PM)AboveAverageJoe Wrote:  We have miles of unprotected border with Canada yet we are not drowning in Canadians. I mean we got stuck with Beiber, but I can live with that. The answer is there is no reason for them to come here.
Remove the incentives for illegal immigration is the crux of my arguement.

Post: #22

(09-22-2016 12:54 PM)AboveAverageJoe Wrote:  

(09-22-2016 12:46 PM)Enigma Wrote:  The wall was never about stopping Pablo from getting a job on a construction site. It's for keeping out criminals and terrorists.

Criminals have ways and means to get in our country, most terrorists come from countries where we issue a large amount of student and H1B visas. It is easy for criminals and terrorists, it is the poor campesinos that can't get in without paying for the priviledge of a week long walk through inhospitable country.

Actually there are hundreds of migrants per week pouring over the border from war torn Africa.

Also, the "tunnel" argument is the equivalent of saying you shouldn't lock your doors because someone can break a window.

Yes, criminals CAN get around a wall, but it will be a hell of a lot harder.

The cost of the wall is more than justified to keep people from wandering back and forth across our border as they please.

Post: #23

It's just one plug of many to stop the dam leaking.

Post: #24

Anyone who has driven through Falfurrias South Texas or between San Diego and LA on I-5 has driven through the San Clemente Immigration checkpoint where you are required to prove you are a US citizen to Federal Border Patrol Agents. Yet illegals in the US come in contact will the police all day, every day and are not required to prove they are even her legally. There is something intrisically wrong with that. I am travelling in my own Country and have to prove I am a legal citizen yet illegals are given entire cities to live in that are "safe places" for them, sanctuary cities.
Listen to my arguement please.

De-incentivize illegal immigration and enforce existing laws.
The wall is not even needed.
Given the choice of possibly months spent in a detention center and unavoidable deportation afterwards, many illegals will leave of their own accord.

De-incentivize and Enforce.

Post: #25

Morocco has just constructed a wall at his border with Algeria.
http://www.katibin.fr/2015/06/01/maroc-c...-lalgerie/



Are you telling me that what humble, rather poor and small Morocco just did (or what China did centuries ago), the mighty USA is not capable of doing?