Hmmm, good point. God fearin’ Texan partisans abandoned by the evil NWO libruls in Washington slugging it out with heavily armed narcotrafficantes for the soul of the plucky little republic. There’s a ten-book deal for a pulp writer right there. The prepper novel crowd’ll eat that up.
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I think there are a substantial number of countries (but like you said, “others of that kind”) that require an exit visa, which is not the same thing as not being allowed to leave at all. (Perhaps in some instances that visa is essentially a tax, not a security clearance.) But, yeah, I don’t believe Mexico is one of those places.
So, $200M/year. Trump estimates for his wall is $8B… so by 2067 it’ll be done, right?!
But, let’s ask a professional estimator how much it would cost… they say $25B for the wall alone, not including video systems and yearly maintenance. It’ll all be paid for by year 2142!
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Ow wow, I had completely forgotten about these guys…
How much is several thousand miles of wall with the associated defences going to cost? The Israeli fence is currently costing around $2 million/km, and that’s from a pro-fence Israeli source. 3000km = $6 billion, (unless it’s done by Halliburton in which case make that $60 billion).
However, the Israeli fence is at almost all points conveniently close to Israeli populated areas so the construction and maintenance costs will be higher in the US. Even with the convenience it is costing Israel an amount in annual maintenance roughly equal to the US’s aid to Mexico, i.e. in the order of $250-500 million per year. Pro rata we can say that the annual maintenance cost is likely to be at least $1.5 billion (six times $250 million for 6 times the length) and because of the costs of access can probably double that.
So best case we are looking at $6 billion in direct costs and around $1.5 billion in annual maintenance. Mexico might pay that for access to US markets, or they might just possibly go and have a word with the South American economies, China and Russia.
I suspect in reality the costs will be much higher, in which case the chance that the Mexican government will simply wash their hands of the whole thing and say “You deal with it” will be much higher. When the shooting war starts - the US shooting people trying to get over or under the wall, which is the only way Trump will stop them - it is going to be interesting to say the least.
Ah, thank you, it would seem to bear out my analogical estimate above.
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I know where we should send Christie now.
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Building bridges rather than closing them, it’s called progress.
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It’s called the “I have no political career left unless I can become VP, and Rubio and I hate each other, so fuck it, endorse Trump” strategy.
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One can only hope that Bernie Sanders becomes president so they can afford to get the help they desperately need.
Considering that you could still send drugs over any wall or tunnel under it, how would a big wall change the current situation?
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I’d be interested to see what Trump would and wouldn’t be willing to cut from the US aid to Mexico total.
Bleeding-heart stuff like ‘Child Survival and Health’, sure, we can all get behind trimming the fat; but a pretty good chunk of the bill is basically good solid drug war stuff. 91.6million direct military assistance, Narcotics control 27.5million, ‘Nonproliferation, Anti-terrorism, Demining and Related’ 7 million, So $126 million of that total is going to require a fairly big exercise in establishment face-spitting to even touch. I’d prefer to avoid the situation coming up; but I would be interested to know what items he’d be willing to cut.
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That sort of assistance is usually conditional on the money being sent right back to the US, to American defence contractors. It’s not so much a taxpayer subsidy for the other country as a taxpayer subsidy for the American contractors.
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But it doesn’t really matter for campaign purposes.
Nor do the realities of construction financing, @morcheeba, @kupfernigk. Saying “we’ll cut foreign aid and use the money to build American infrastructure” is public relations gold, and there’s plenty of foreign aid money both in the Mexican aid bucket and in many other South American countries’ aid budget as well.
All Trump would have to do is take the first ten cents from money that Mexico never had, but that had been earmarked for them, and he’d have kept your campaign promise. Mexico paid for the wall. Or close enough.
Details don’t matter, it’s all manipulation of perception through new and pre-existing memes.
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An effective wall would never pass an environmental impact review. It would block animal movement and migration, quite possibly violating the Endangered Species Act, among others. I’m sure there would be other environmental and legal issues, that’s just off the top of my head.
Not to mention:
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I am well aware that, while government is largely about economics, the electorate pays almost no attention to them at all except at the level of “am I paying for this” or “is there a recession”.
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A wall the entire distance is unnecessary. There are already fences where it matters most (i.e. by cities). He’ll extend the fences a bit, beef up security elsewhere, and call it even. Huge sections don’t need a wall because it’s the middle of a desert and people crossing there risk death as the try to avoid inland border stations.
Here’s an idea of what some of the border looks like
“Mexico will pay for it” might very well mean “we reduced their aid”. Most Americans don’t give a flying fig what is cut – they just hear “foreign aid” and then the rest is noise, not stopping to think that it’s selfish aid (i.e. $1 in aid means $100 to our own economy) or that it’s simply the humanitarian thing to so.
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But… but… rich people are magic! Trump has a lot of money, therefore he’s really magic. He’ll wave his rich-person wand and Mexico will be all, “Here, we built this giant wall for you, because it’s your birthday. Wait, that doesn’t make any sense.” That’s just how rich people work.
Well, you could leave a country illegally. In an unregistered vehicle, for example. Or, um, riding on a rocket made out of illegal fireworks. Or in a boat made from bales of cocaine. Yeah, totally.
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I’m just happy that the U.S. is still a decent enough place that people are still trying to get in. If you’re worried about people trying to sneak out of your country then you’re doing something very wrong.
Countries that post border guards to contain their own population are usually run by despotic regimes.
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Exactly.
Here in the UK UKIP keeps telling us we need to leave the EU to stop illegal immigration. They have yet to explain how, if we leave the EU, we are going to stop French people with small fast boats from taking immigrants over to our rather porous coastline, when we can’t even control them in environments like airports or ferry ports. What are we going to do? “Hey French people, cut it out. We’ll…er…complain to the EU.” “Et vous savez ce que vous pouvez faire? Allez s’enculer!”
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He appears to be promising a “great wall” along the whole border. (Or course everything he says is low-information, so it could mean whatever he wants it to.)
We’ve already spent $2.4 billion to fence a third of the border - the rest, being less accessible locations, would cost significantly more per-mile. Plus, the fence that’s there wasn’t always built to specs. The US only sends about $200 million a year in aid to Mexico, and most of that is military/drugs//terrorism-related, ultimately in order to help secure the US’s own border, so leaving aside the impossibility of transfering money earmarked for specific programs into others, it’s not remotely enough to do much. Trump’s website suggests, however, that he’ll pay for it with increased visa and entry fees from Mexico to the US and confiscating payments from migrant workers back to Mexico - the first of which is beyond silly, and the second, horrible too.
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