NOGALES, ARIZONA, UNITED STATES - 2017/11/14: The border wall at the US - Mexico border in the city of Nogales, Arizona According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection there are at least 580 miles of physical barriers in place to divide United States and Mexico in 2009. The Trump administration wants to extent the barriers to cover the whole 1989 miles of total length of the border between the two countries. (Photo by DImitros Manis/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
President Donald Trump is heading down to San Diego, California, tomorrow to see how eight border wall prototypes have been coming along. He’ll spend three hours in San Diego looking at the 30-foot tall prototypes for the wall, of which only $3 billion has been budgeted for in his 2018 budget. It’s the 2019 budget in which Trump hopes to fully fund construction of the wall, estimates for the cost of which average out around $20 billion.
Trump has famously promised to “make Mexico pay for the wall,” and doubled down on the claim by saying that the wall “just got ten feet taller” every time a Mexican politician refused to pay, but he doesn’t need them to. In fact, given the amount of money we spend on illegal immigrants currently, we could easily pay for the wall by diverting those funds.
According to the New York Post,
The controversial barrier, rather, will cover its own cost just by closing the border to illegal immigrants who tend to go on the federal dole.
That’s the finding of recent immigration studies showing the $18 billion wall President Trump plans to build along the southern border will pay for itself by curbing the importation of not only crime and drugs, but poverty.
“The wall could pay for itself even if it only modestly reduced illegal crossings and drug smuggling,” Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Post.
Federal data shows that a wall would work. A two-story corrugated metal fence in El Paso, Texas, first erected under the Bush administration has already curtailed illegal border crossings there by more than 89 percent over the five-year period during which it was built.
Absent a wall, the Homeland Security Department forecasts an additional 1.7 million illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border over the next decade.
The wall would only have to prevent 200,000 of those crossings to “pay for itself” in terms of savings from welfare, public education, refundable tax credits, and other benefits currently received by illegal immigrants. If the wall stopped half those crossings, it would pay for itself four times over.
As we’ve reported previously, the total cost of illegal immigration is $113 billion a year at the federal, state, and local level, with the vast majority of the costs ($84 billion) placed upon state and local governments.
A border wall costs a lot – but not anywhere near as much as illegal immigration.
Share this great plan with others to show them how easily we could pay for a border wall!
By Adam Andrzejewski for RealClearPolicy The State Department recently gave $330,000 to two organizations that…
Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a habit. That habit…
According to a recent survey, public confidence in the banking sector has plummeted since the…
Kyrsten Sinema, the moderate Arizona senator who late last year left the Democrat Party to…
By Dr. Derek Ellerman Titletown, USA has been all over the news recently, with the Groundhog…
Far-left Democrat Representative Jamaal Bowman blasted efforts to ban the Chinese-owned social media/spying app TikTok,…
View Comments
Do you have only one other comment because all but the very least among you realize that you cannot be "illegal" or undocumented, and receive government benefits? The operative word is "undocumented." Therefore, no legitimate record of you exists. Therefore, you are not eligible for benefits. Applying for benefits would immediately reveal your undocumented status. Why are you folks either so willing to believe untruths or just gullible? Your lack of knowledge should be a source of shame to you.
Of course, this is speaking to keeping illegals out of USA. In order to realize immediate savings, we need to deport those already here !
DONT WORRY, MEXICO WILL PAY FOR THE WAY, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. WE CAN STOP THEM SENDING MONEY TO MEXICO, TARIFFS, ETC. TRUMP KNOW HOW, THE OTHER IDIOTS IN WASHINGTON HAS NO IDEA ABOUT BUSINESS.
Trump's wall would not have prevented Melania from entering the U.S. and working illegally. It would not have prevented the chain migration that brought her Communist family to America.
Mexico will not pay for the wall. American taxpayers will pay for it.
It is highly unlikely that the federal government and the states would ever cut off illegal immigrants from public education or Medicaid. Cutting off SNAP and TANF are also unlikely. So the only slice you'd get is able bodied single men and women without children.
Super, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but they do get government benefits. I don't know exactly how, but they do. One way they do is that they qualify for SNAP, etc. through their anchor kids. Maternal/Infant Care, which insures care for mothers and children from pregnancy through infancy, may not require documentation of proof of citizenship. I don't know. And, of course, Emergancy Room care is given to everyone who walks in and we eat the cost. There may be other ways that they are actually given benefits, but these are some ways that I know of.
When I went to court recently on a speeding ticket, there were a few illegal aliens there. Not only did they have the traffic violation itself, but the judge would ask them "Do you have a license?". The answer was no. I didn't see him do anything about it, and, of course, we would have been CHARGED w/driving w/o a license. They were handled differently.
Why the hell are we spending billions on illegal immigrants in the first place? We couldn’t go to another country & expect to get money from their government. I am beyond sick of this nonsense!
Deport any and all illegal aliens. No amnesty ever. No chain migration. No DACA, no dreamers, no anchor babies, no illegal aliens period. E-Verify all potential employees for American jobs! Charge criminally and jail all employers who hire illegal aliens! We are a sovereign nation of laws and Illegal means illegal. No illegal acts should ever be rewarded. American benefits should be for American citizens only! Send ICE to their address and deport any and all illegal aliens found now! Bring back "Operation Wetback". It worked in the 1950s and it would work today if properly implemented. Build the wall now!
Super, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but they do get government benefits. I don't know exactly how, but they do. One way they do is that they qualify for SNAP, etc. through their anchor kids. Maternal/Infant Care, which insures care for mothers and children from pregnancy through infancy, may not require documentation of proof of citizenship. I don't know. And, of course, Emergancy Room care is given to everyone who walks in and we eat the cost. There may be other ways that they are actually given benefits, but these are some ways that I know of.
When I went to court recently on a speeding ticket, there were a few illegal aliens there. Not only did they have the traffic violation itself, but the judge would ask them "Do you have a license?". The answer was no. I didn't see him do anything about it, and, of course, we would have been CHARGED w/driving w/o a license. They were handled differently.
It is highly unlikely that the federal government and the states would ever cut off illegal immigrants from public education or Medicaid. Cutting off SNAP and TANF are also unlikely. So the only slice you'd get is able bodied single men and women without children.