Donald Trump's Wall

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has stated throughout his campaign that one of the first things that he would do if he gets elected is build a giant wall along the border between Mexico and the US. According to him, the wall will greatly reduce the number of illegal immigrants that are coming into this country, calling them "criminals and rapists" with maybe a few exceptions here and there. Not only is this attitude completely uncalled for, as immigrants are less likely to cause crimes than people who were born here, but the wall that he claims will be the "best wall anyone has ever seen" will do practically nothing to stop the illegal immigrants, while putting us further into debt.

Throughout his campaign, Trump has been throwing out numbers for how much it will cost to build this wall, originally going from about $4 billion to gradually bringing that number up to $12 billion. What he seems to have forgotten was that $12 billion is at least how much money is going to be needed for making the materials required for the building the walls, let alone all the money that is going to be needed to survey the land, dig out the foundations, building the infrastructure required to haul the materials to the construction site, and then the labor required to build the thing. Conservative estimates put the final price for the construction of the wall to be about $25 billion for a 30 foot tall wall, more if he decides to make it bigger. After building the wall, which could take at least four years to finish, the cost to maintain it will surpass the initial cost to build it in as little as seven years. That means that in 11 years, the amount of money put into building and maintaining this wall will be at least $50 billion.

So, if we are going to spend this much money on building something, how useful is it going to be? Well, it is estimated that about half the number of illegal immigrants come to this country via plane or boat, neither of which a wall is going to help much to stop. As for the other half, the wall is not going to hinder much, as there are fairly simple ways to bypass the wall, namely going above or below it. With the current border fence, many people just tunnel under it and hide the entrances so that the border patrol doesn't find them. With the wall, all they would have to do is dig slightly deeper and then continue on what they normally did. If they just want to get over to the US and not smuggle things back and forth, then all they would need is a tall enough ladder or a long enough grappling hook, and then just climb over onto US soil. If they feel really destructive, then they could always just blow a hole through the wall and go though before anyone can arrive.

In the end, this wall would be a sink hole for at least $50 billion in just 11 years, do nothing to stop illegals from coming into our country, and potentially damage our relations with one of our biggest trade partners.


Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU8dCYocuyI

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/09/this-is-what-trumps-border-wall-could-cost-us.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/9-outrageous-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-latinos_us_55e483a1e4b0c818f618904b