I love my country, but I’m afraid a large percentage of my fellow Americans have gone completely mad. Trump wants a wall 2,000 miles long at a cost of $32 Billion (according to MIT). Most of the people over the years who have come across the border came here to work. They go back home after the work is over! America has encouraged them to work here! (To do the jobs Americans don’t want — or to just be able to get a harvest done in time.) The people who come and stay here are the people who overstay their visas! We need those agricultural, meat packing and seasonal hospitality industry workers! We have told them we want them!
Trump’s whole campaign started with his claims about these people being horrible human beings:
“They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. “
If you saw Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9 then you’ll know Trump staged that whole rally and paid people to come to it with signs (Moore knows Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who gave Moore the whole story). Trump was trying to get the attention of NBC so that he could make a better, new contract for “The Apprentice.” But an amazing thing happened: The country loved it! (NBC hated it and said “You’re fired!”) America had regressed 150 years and had become largely a nation of bigots and racists once again, just like in the South before the Civil War! Trump rallied all this hate into a bid for the presidency that won the electoral college (and the election) by only 77,744 votes in just three key Northern states, but he lost the popular vote by 3,000,000. There is strong evidence that he got those 77,744 votes through Russian meddling with social media, using polling data provided to the Kremlin by Paul Manafort, possibly under Trump’s own direction. See:
The Election Came Down to 77,744 Votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan (Updated)
Now it is true that displaced people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have been putting together caravans to come to the U.S. But these caravans are nothing new, and have existed for years, with varying degrees of “success.” The real cause of the current caravans is U.S. policy in South America: we give foreign “aid” to repressive military regimes in Latin America who prevent socialism from rising (or even just fair elections), and these regimes use those very funds to drive their people out of their countries — in caravans! It’s all explained here by a world famous educator from MIT, and goes back decades in U.S. foreign policy:
Noam Chomsky: Members of Migrant Caravan Are Fleeing from Misery & Horrors Created by the U.S.
Even harder to fathom is the fact that “the wall” is the least cost-effective method of securing our border with Mexico. We live in a high tech world, and the following technologies (among others) give you far more bang for the buck:
- Drone technology (both to combat incoming drones and for use of drones for surveillance) — the Cartels are becoming very adept at moving narcotics across the border with drones — the payloads are getting bigger and if intercepted you don’t get caught!
- Equipment that scans vehicles for synthetic opioids like fentanyl (most of which comes across the border in cars) — many more Americans are killed by fentanyl overdoses than “murderous illegal immigrants” (actually Trump allocated some money for this equipment in his “deal” offered Saturday)
- Aerial surveillance to identify tunnels — tunnels are a problem even with the heavily patrolled Israeli “wall” that blocks the Palestinians — if a wall two thousand miles long is in fact built there will be tunnels galore! (A drug runner who testified at El Chapo’s trial said that 90% of the cocaine that was smuggled into America in the 80s came through just two tunnels between Mexico and Arizona.)
It’s easy to tunnel under a wall, go around a wall, or go over a wall. All things considered, a wall is a very expensive solution with almost no return in terms of truly enhanced security.
Another factor driving people northward is climate change — farmers are being driven from their land by drought, and many populations in Latin America are having a hard time finding enough food. We are seeing this same unfortunate phenomenon in Africa. And who’s the biggest polluter of greenhouse gasses of all? You guessed it — the U.S.:
It’s truly disgusting that we are strongly contributing to the destruction of Latin America’s means of subsistence and at the same time wanting to construct an insulting wall to keep them out.
Come on America! Wake up! This whole “wall” thing is Trump’s last gasp as a politician. In fact, Trump didn’t even like the idea when his political consultants first proposed it to him, but his consultants (including Roger Stone) won in the end because they felt the idea kept Trump squarely on the immigration topic, which was the cornerstone of his campaign:
Where The Idea For Donald Trump's Wall Came From
A few months ago Trump had the economy going for him, but that’s headed south now — and fast (mostly due to his tax cuts for the rich, new military expenditures, and tariffs — we are drowning in debt and poor trade policies). And everyone sees his claim that “Mexico will pay for the wall” as a total absurdity. Trump knows that if he doesn’t get “the wall” then really he has nothing left! And most other conservatives agree:
Trump giving in on wall funding ‘probably the end of his presidency,’ SC’s Graham says
Ann Coulter won't vote for Trump in 2020 if he can't secure funding for the border wall he promised
There has been tons of research about “the wall” that shows how in many cases a wall is actually COUNTERPRODUCTIVE! Here’s a collection of links, mostly from conservative sources, that argue strongly against “the wall” (I harvested all these links from other articles on Quora, so you might have seen some already):
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-wall-wont-work-Why the Wall Won’t Work
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/donald-trump-2016-wall-wont-work-214167-The World is Full of Walls that Don’t Work
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/why-border-walls-fail-by-reece-jones-2015-09?barrier=accesspaylog-Why Border Walls Fail
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/borders-and-walls-do-barriers-deter-unauthorized-migration-Do Barriers Deter Unauthorized Immigraton?
http://theconversation.com/big-beautiful-walls-dont-stop-migrants-in-the-us-or-europe-72040-”Big, Beautiful” Walls Don’t Stop Migrants in the U.S.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3205724/How-65-countries-erected-security-walls-borders.html-How 65 Countries Constructed Border Walls that Don’t Work
https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/community/2017/06/13/border-walls-dont-stop-immigration-but-they-do-undermine-integration-Border Walls Don’t Stop Immigration
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/10/12/the-conservative-case-against-a-border-fence-trying-to-stop-illegal-immigration-with-a-really-big-fence-would-be-a-futile-waste-of-money?fbclid=IwAR2Vpy8yf3IyCygBnjAEsHLa56bP0u5p8qw_sB0yg4sVGk97zc36calW4o-The Conservative Case Against a Border Fence
https://www.chicagotribune.com/n...
https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/04/donald-trump-border-wall-plan-ridiculous-guaranteed-failure/?fbclid=IwAR0lU3uOzL2drl7ONPdjfswlKLr3uX4Xc_93Aly-jBG3L_mbSW9TwxxXUA4-Trump’s Border Wall Plan Is Ridiculous
https://medium.com/s/story/what-happened-when-a-trump-supporter-challenged-me-about-the-wall-e54e86a5edd1?fbclid=IwAR3HMHiFZjLm0vnCN3Lb_25dvWpqfz3LnJPpr63lUlqehRNZRBJgje6Q4n-What Happened When a Trump Supporter Challenged Me About the Wall
The Wall: The real costs of a barrier between the United States and Mexico-The Real Costs of the Wall