We Built the 2006-2007 Wall: 'Over 100 Miles in 90 Days' - By Jonathon Moseley

"We built over 100 miles in only 90 days," explains James Bonk.  Bonk was a consultant and manager among the team of companies who in 2006-2008 built and extended much of the border wall that already exists today along the USA's southern border with Mexico, in the Goldwater and Yuma sectors.  The prime contractor was Boeing, but there were many subcontractors.  More recently, Bonk has been involved in planning border walls in Spain and in Israel.  He has worked with a variety of major companies and different engineering designs for fences and barriers.

Actual experience in building miles of border wall argues for a so-called Bollard wall or fence, or the design of vertical steel rods or "slats" (perhaps some other metal, but metal) promoted by Trump more recently.  ("Bollards are upright steel posts mounted in or alongside roads and parking lots to control, direct, or obstruct vehicular traffic or impact," says the Long Fence Co.) 

James Bonk came to speak at the Northern Virginia Tea Party, skeptical of discussions about Trump's border wall being solid concrete slabs.  From his years of experience, transporting giant concrete slabs to the middle of nowhere would be expensive and inefficient.  He has worked on concrete wall projects but would not recommend that design on the wilderness frontier.  Mixing and pouring concrete slabs on site in the middle of nowhere would be difficult.  Logistics and transport of components are an important part of any such project.

Opponents of a border wall keep saying we must listen to experts.  Along with border patrol agents on duty, those experts include those like James Bonk, who have actually built the parts of the border wall we have now.  But those experts and border patrol agents on site are calling for a metal wall of vertical pipes or slats they can see through, which is exactly what Trump is now promoting.

James Bonk is concerned that bureaucrats a decade ago sabotaged and undermined the project with "designed to fail" illogical requirements and that ideas being discussed today are similarly aimed at intentionally failing in the project.  The wall-building project abruptly stopped when Barack Obama became president.  Nevertheless, despite the hindrances, they successfully built hundreds of miles.

This author asked James Bonk about the problems of building in or near the Rio Grande in the flood plains along the border of Texas.  Not even remotely a problem was among the lessons learned from experience.  A concrete foundation would not need to be laid in the lowlands.

One of the best techniques would be to dig a trench and then bury a steel "footer" deep into the ground.  The metal plate serving as the buried foundation would have legs or wings out to each side to make the wall stay upright.  The vertical slats or pipes forming the actual fence or wall would then be welded or bolted into the footer.  A second level of footer may be added with side legs or wings just beneath the ground level.  Then the entire footer is buried.

Another design involves massive metal bases seated into the ground by pile-drivers.  Each such base attaches to one large vertical pipe or a section of vertical fence.

This design will allow flood waters to freely flow through the openings without obstruction.  Strong winds would flow through easily.  Irrigation channels or pipes can be installed through the fence to bring water from the river to farmers and ranchers.

Trump's new sections would be probably be 30 to 40 feet, rather than the 12-foot-high sections constructed in 2007-2009.  Bonk emphasizes that teams then were prohibited from building a high wall out of fear that trespassers would climb over and then fall.  In the past, bureaucrats did not want a fence that would actually work.

Solar panels mounted on the ground on the north side of the access road along the fence would power motion sensors or movement differential radar mounted up on the top of the fence, triggering radio alerts back to Customs and Border Patrol; lights; video cameras; and loud-speaker-recorded warnings of potential injury if climbing the fence is attempted.  If anyone tries to damage the fence, the video recordings would get him put in jail with felony convictions, not released into U.S. society.  A win.

Recall that it is already the law of the land that a border wall shall be built along the "entire"  United States' southern border.  In late 2006, Congress enacted and President George W. Bush signed into law the Secure Fence Act of 2006. 

The wording of the act is not about a "fence," but about any kind of barrier customized to the particular terrain in each location to the extent necessary to "the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband."  That is "all" — as in "all."  So the Secure Fence Act of 2006 requires building "whatever it takes" — not a "fence" per se.  And it requires operational control of the "entire" border of the United States.

The Secure Fence Act of 2006 was never fully implemented because Congress did not appropriate the funds to pay for a barrier along the entire border.  Because the project is already a construction project "authorized" by Congress, the only remaining question is to supply the funding needed through appropriations by Congress or by Trump repurposing funds from other budgetary line items and applying those funds to finishing the border wall.

In 2007, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) led passage of an amendment that did not actually change much.  The amendment clarified that the secretary of homeland security has discretion to determine the type of wall or barrier appropriate for each location along the border.  That means that if Trump's DHS secretary determines that an extensive wall of vertical slats 100 feet high is necessary, the Secretary's determination becomes the absolute law of the land.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/02/we_built_the_20062007_wall_over_100_miles_in_90_days.html

Trump's Wall Is Already Paid For - By Daniel John Sobieski (With some introductory comments - by CL)

(This article and yesterday’s, which I posted here - http://crushlimbraw.blogspot.com/2017/03/trump-does-central-america-favor-by.html - illustrate in spades the absolute asinine ‘compassion’ of Leftists and Churchian do-gooders. Aiding and abetting massive immigration is a LOSE/LOSE result for both countries – it overloads our social welfare system, schools and jails and devastates the countries that send them. Tell that to your ‘compassionate’ Leftist/Churchian idiots who claim a higher virtue by spending your tax money. It’s time for them to take their heads out of their hindquarters and use the brains God gave them.

The following reply to one of my Disqus posts was so good, I repeat it here:

“Illegal immigration has had a devastating impact on the societies that ship illegals. The govts may benefit from the remittances but they do not benefit from the raw talents of their people, they just take the money and leave the people for us to take care of. This is why productivity is so low, the people have never been invested in and their creative ideas and talent are never used in the home country. It also excuses the govts from educating their people. Central Americans have the lowest education levels of all immigrants. Illegal immigration is also bad for families - why do you think MS-13 emerged? Fatherless boys. Why were they fatherless? Because one parent was away from the family working illegally abroad in the states. It's devastated the society. Now they have rising incomes from remittances but along with rising incomes comes a demographic time bomb, they don't have enough population growth, this always happens with rising incomes. What is going on is that they will get old before they get truly rich. Such is the impact of encouraging illegal immigration.”)

Critics of the border wall proposed by President Trump have said the cost is prohibitive under current budget and economic conditions, that no way is Mexicogoing to pay for it, and shifting funds away from the TSA, Coast Guard, and FEMA are counterproductive in terms of national security.

These criticisms ignore the costs to the U.S. in terms other than money -- increased crime, overtaxed law enforcement, the drain on public resources such as education, medical care, etc., and the driving down of real wages through an endless supply of cheap labor.

In fact, thanks in large part to the mere threat of the wall, the sudden enforcement of existing law, and the stripping of funding from sanctuary cities by President Trump, illegal immigration has plummeted by 40 percent in February, a trend that if continued will reduce the costs and burdens of illegal immigration to the point that the benefits of enhanced border security, including the wall, will be more than paid for. As the New York Post noted:

The number of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States from Mexico declined by 40 percent from January to February, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said on Wednesday.

The downturn came after President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20 vowing to deport many of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States…

He said the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, which compiled the data, historically sees a 10 percent to 20 percent increase in apprehensions of illegal immigrants from January to February…

“Since the administration’s implementation of Executive Orders to enforce immigration laws, apprehensions and inadmissible activity is trending toward the lowest monthly total in at least the last five years,” Kelly said.

President Trump has shown that border security is not that hard. It merely requires willpower and resolve that puts the impact of illegal immigration on America and its citizens above the impact on the political fortunes of pandering politicians. Now comes a study from the Center for Immigration Studies showing that this ongoing reduction in illegal immigration will reduce related costs to the point the wall is paid for:

President Donald Trump’s border wall only needs to stop about 10 percent of illegal crossing in order to pay for itself, according to an analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies.The estimated $12 to $15 billion cost of the wall would quickly be offset by the savings to the government if fewer illegal immigrants arrive in the country over the next decade, CIS found. Only a small portion of the population of people who are expected to attempt an illegal crossing in the next decade -- between 9 and 12 percent -- would have to be stopped for the wall to totally pay for itself.

The analysis from CIS, a group that advocates for moderating immigration levels, relies on fiscal estimates from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NAS) for the average cost to taxpayers of illegal immigrants. NAS estimates one illegal immigrant costs state and local governments approximately $75,000 in a lifetime, taking into account taxes paid and the cost of providing benefits such as education and health care.

Critics say the costs of illegal immigration fall largely on state and local governments and it is a federal government burdened with debt that has to write the checks. But the costs in either case are born by the American taxpayer and the American worker. Ask Kate Steinle’s father what the true costs of illegal immigration are and who pays for them.

Trump was able to begin immediate construction of the border wall and opening up bidding for contracts thanks to a 2006 measure signed into law by President George W. Bush and supported by Democrats including then-senators Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. 

Democrats are already grumbling about Donald Trump’s proposed border wall, though Barack Obama and other leaders in their party voted not so long ago for George W. Bush’s proposal to build a major wall on the border with Mexico.

Bush signed the proposal into law in 2006, after it was passed by huge bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate. The law ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to construct about 700 miles of fencing along the southern border, and authorized the addition of lights and cameras and sensors to enhance security. The law explicitly required the wall to be constructed of “at least two layers of reinforced fencing.”

Two-thirds of the Republican-led House approved the bill, including 64 Democrats, and 80 of 100 senators approved the bill in the Senate. Then Sens. Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton were among the 26 Democrats who approved the bill. Supporters also included Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is set to take over leadership of the Senate for Democrats in 2016.

The Secure Fence Act of 2006 required the construction of 700 miles of new border fence along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. “The Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide for at least two layers of reinforced fencing, the installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras and sensors…” the act said.

It was to be modeled on the success of the border barriers in the San Diego sector of the U.S. border. The operative word was “secure.” Instead of this two-layer secure fence what has been built consists of flimsy pedestrian fencing or vehicle fencing consisting of posts people can slither through.

The two-tier fence in San Diego runs 14 miles along the border with Tijuana, Mexico. The first layer is a high steel fence, with an inner high anti-climb fence with a no-man’s land in between. It has been amazingly effective. According to a 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, illegal alien apprehensions in the San Diego sector dropped from 202,000 in 1992 to 9,000 in 2004.

Cameras and sensors played a part but the emphasis was on physical barriers and roads that were patrolled by real live border guards, not by robots. Then in 2006 the Democrats took back Congress and, in 2008, the White House.

They saw in unrestricted immigration a means to fundamentally transform the demographics of America and its political landscape. A wave of what some called “undocumented Democrats” would be allowed to flood across the border as ICE was told not to enforce the law. Former border state governor Janet Napolitano, who became DHS secretary, reportedly once said: “You show me a 50-foot fence and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border,” The rest, as they say, is history.

But the consequences of unrestricted illegal immigration soon became too big to ignore and with a candidate willing to touch the new third rail of American politics, border security, a political movement chanting “build the wall” swept Trump into power.

The San Diego fence worked. So will Trump’s wall. Build the Wall.   

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared inInvestor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the ChicagoSun-Times among other publications.        

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/03/trumps_wall_is_already_paid_for.html

The Masses Will Find Trump’s Tonight Address—With Or Without The Desperado Media - By Judi McLeod

President Donald Trump will—for the first time from the Oval Office—address both nation and watching world 9 p.m tonight on “the humanitarian and national security crisis on our Southern Border.”

This is NEWS to most everybody other than the Fake News First media, including a sizeable percentage of the U.S. population, and all of those living in nations whose sovereignty is being incrementally erased by their own governments, the latter tuning in just to see whether the Americans really do have a handle on Immigration.

.

Stampeding to black-out mode like crows to carrion, the media following the lemming-like cable television outlets, are doing their best to keep the masses in the dark.

“Many media figures weighed in on social media Monday over the decision. (Breitbart, Jan. 7, 2019)

“CNN’s Brian Stelter tweeted that a “TV exec” told him he was torn on what to do about the address.

“TV exec texts: ‘He calls us fake news all the time, but needs access to airwaves… If we give him the time, he’ll deliver a fact-free screed without rebuttal. And if we don’t give him the time, he’ll call every network.”

The President’s got “access to airwaves” and that’s where millions will rush to find him, Mr. Stelter.

How dare the POTUS lay out the reality of “the humanitarian and SECURITY CRISIS on America’s Southern border” for all to see and hear?!

Hasn’t that very epitome of high morals House Speaker Nancy Pelosi already framed having a border wall as “IMMORAL”?

According to Pelosi, anyone looking to the border wall for safety and security is immoral.

According to the media, Pelosi’s bang-on.

Convinced they can keep the masses from ever knowing what Trump has to say in this historic address to the nation, the media have gone all the way into Desperado Mode.

To the fact that hundreds Americans have already lost their lives to migrants getting in to the USA without the border wall, the media is, in effect,  telling Trump: “Don’t tell them THAT! because they don’t need to know!”

The mainstream media, and only the mainstream media,  has a monopoly on the Truth, and with Social Media now backing up their every move, the monopoly is more impregnable than any border wall. 

“According to The Hill, CNN and Fox News Channel are planning to air Trump’s address on border security, while the basic cable networks CBS, NBC, and ABC have not committed one way or the other. (Breitbart)

“MSNBC has not made a public comment one way or the other, and the network has repeatedly opted not to air Trump events before.”

With or without these shrinking violets, there will be a myriad of ways for the public to find out what the president said by late tonight or early tomorrow.

Not only will the Three Wisemen of the Air Waves Limbaugh, Hannity and Levin be all over it, but EVERYONE who feels their family’s life is worth protecting, will search every possibility to hear what President Trump intends to do about the long-awaited Border Wall.

Having found the news they need from wherever, they will go back again and again for replays.

More than most anything else, the president’s address tonight will prove that it is impossible for the elitist media to effectively black-out the truth.

They can suppress the Conservative voice on the Internet, turn the lights off on news sites with a conservative or Christian bent.  They can tip off Facebook and Twitter who, what, where and when to ban.

But they can’t black out the truth no matter how desperado they get.

That’s because the protection President Donald Trump’s wall will provide doesn’t distinguish between Conservatives and Progressives.

And mostly because THE WALL IS FOR ALL.

---

---

Only YOU can save CFP from Social Media Suppression. Tweet, Post, Forward, Subscribe or Bookmark us

Judi McLeod -- Bio and Archives | 12 Comments

Copyright © Canada Free Press

https://canadafreepress.com/article/the-masses-will-find-trumps-tonight-addresswith-or-without-the-desperado-me

Border Wall Could Save Taxpayers Five Times Its Cost Over 10 Years - By Craig Bannister

Building a wall on the southern U.S. border could save taxpayers four to five times its cost over the next 10 years, a new report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) shows.

Using National Academy of Science (NAS) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data, the study looks at the lifetime net financial drain (taxes minus services used) of each illegal alien entering the country.

Given the $12-15 billion cost of the border wall and assuming 1.7 million illegal crossings without the wall over the next 10 years:

• Each illegal is a lifetime net cost to taxpayers of $74,722
• If the wall cut illegal entries in half (850,000), the wall would save $64 billion over ten years
• The wall would pay for itself in two years (1.9-2.2 years, depending on cost)
• It would save taxpayers 4-5 times its cost over 10 years

If the wall stopped only 9-12% (160-180,000) of illegal crossing over the next decade, a $12-15 billion wall would pay for itself in ten years

Factoring in the average cost of an illegal alien’s U.S.-born children, the net financial cost taxpayers would have to absorb is $94,931. If the wall stopped only 9% (160,000) illegal crossing, a $12,000,000 wall would still pay for itself in about eight years.

See full report.

Border Wall Could Save Taxpayers Five Times Its Cost Over 10 Years

Bulk Cash Pays for the Wall - By John A. Cassara

In the hyper-charged debate over the merits of building “the wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border and its funding impact on a possible government shutdown, I would like to propose a solution. 

The focus has largely been on contraband and illegal immigrants going north.  We largely ignore the other side of the equation; i.e. illicit proceeds – mostly in the form of bulk cash – flowing south.  If we could recover just a few percentage points of the tens of billions of profits from the sale of drugs and other transnational crimes (TOC) that annually flow south across the border, we could pay for the wall.  Moreover, targeting the illicit proceeds should be palatable to both Mexico City and Washington DC, and may serve as a basis for enhanced U.S.-Mexican cooperation on illicit trafficking and related TOC.

During the recent presidential campaign we heard that Mexico is going to pay for the wall.  Taxes on certain goods imported from Mexico and/or fees on official remittances have been floated as possible revenue sources.  Others ideas assuredly will surface.  Here, a few considerations are important; one – forcing the government of Mexico to pay would be perceived by Mexicans and many Americans as humiliating, and two – nobody wants to punish U.S. consumers or hard working migrants.

But using criminally derived funds to pay for the wall would drive home the lesson that criminal activity is the reason the wall is being built.  There is also a degree of poetic justice in having the proceeds of crime used to thwart future criminal behavior.  This initiative also ultimately fulfills President Trump’s campaign promise; most of the funding originates from Mexican transnational criminal organizations.

Sometimes lost in the discussion about transnational crime is the fact that criminal organizations are motivated by greed.  Cartels do not traffic in drugs for the sake of trafficking in drugs.  In fact, virtually every type of transnational criminal activity – from the sale of counterfeit goods to arms trafficking – is perpetrated with ultimate objective of making money.  And trafficking drugs is highly profitable.  While estimates of U.S. narcotics sales vary widely, a 2010 White House study pegged the number at $109 billion annually. 

It is important to note that analysts believe much of the money generated from these crimes is actually laundered in the U.S.  In fact, illegal drug sales in the U.S. may generate as much as 20 million pounds of currency every year!  As a result, drug traffickers and money launderers have a logistics problem.   Because of financial transparency reporting requirements, money launderers cannot simply walk into a bank in the U.S. with a suitcase full of cash and deposit it with no questions asked. 

So narcotics trafficking organizations have increasingly moved to smuggling bulk cash into jurisdictions such as Mexico.  “Placing” their ill-gotten gains into financial networks in Mexico is much easier.  Studies recently conducted by the U.S. government suggested that as much as $18 billion to $39 billion is smuggled annually across our southern border in the form of bulk cash.

How do they smuggle the cash?  The techniques are only limited by the criminals’ imaginations.   Some of the most common methods include simply driving it across the border and using a nearly endless list of ways to conceal cash parcels.  Bulk cash is sometimes concealed in vehicles’ spare tires, gasoline tanks, seat cushions, floor boards, and panels. Other uses include tanker trucks or similar vehicles that have false bottoms or altered gasoline or water tanks.  Bulk currency is concealed in shipping containers, often secreted in cargo.  Cash is also hidden in a variety of consumer goods such as boxes of cereal and other food stuffs, teddy bears, dolls, boxes of cigarettes, detergent, baked into bread, stuffed into air compressors, tools, furniture, sports equipment, produce, etc.  And finally, bulk cash is smuggled by couriers simply taping money on their bodies, using special smuggling vests, or simply transported in suitcases and duffle bags.

So how have we done?  A  variety of law enforcement agencies play a role in detecting and intercepting bulk cash smuggling, particularly Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).  From 2005 to 2016, CBP officers reportedly seized a total of $211 million at the southern border.  According to a 2011 GAO study, we are seizing less than 1 percent of the multi-billion in drug-trafficking proceeds smuggled across the border.  Another study suggests that $99.75 of every $100 the cartels ship south is getting through.  Putting these numbers in perspective adds clarity – think of it this way: We seize only a George Washington quarter out of a $100 Benjamin paper bill! 

Of course, additional cash is being seized by other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies sometimes in the interior of the country.  In addition, Mexican law enforcement has also seized bulk cash on its side of the border.  But even combining all seizures, it is still probably fair to say we are only recovering approximately one percent of the illicit cash.

These statistics are even more sobering because bulk cash smuggling is the most straight-forward of anti-money laundering efforts or investigations.  We are not talking about complex money trails layered via off shore havens, tracking trade-based laundering schemes, or tracing virtual currencies in cyber space.  At its core, bulk cash is a physical commodity (money) that generally moves from point A (U.S. side of the border) to point B (Mexican side of the border).  The cash shipments are hidden, often in complex ways – but the fundamental methodology is not complicated.

The consequences of bulk cash smuggling are devastating.  The uncontrolled hemorrhage of billions of dollars of untaxed drug proceeds that flow into the coffers of transnational organized crime groups directly fuels massive crime, corruption, and violence in Mexico.  But the impact of these crimes is not limited to Mexico.  In fact, not only is drug-fueled instability in Mexico spreading to parts of the U.S., particularly in Southwest border-states, but the murder carnage in places like Chicago is largely the end result of drug-related transnational criminality. 

The U.S. government is fully aware of the problem.  In fact, bulk cash smuggling was prominently featured in our last (2007) National Money Laundering Strategy.  The “action items” in the report, centered on traditional law enforcement countermeasures such as increased intelligence, coordination, border inspections, etc., have proved wholly inadequate.  In 2013, the U.S. Senate Drug Caucus released an excellent report on improving U.S. anti-money laundering practices.  The report notes that bulk cash smuggling continues to be a primary money laundering technique and that our counter-measures have been ineffectual.

Law enforcement officials have long observed that if we put a barrier (in all its varied forms) in front of criminals they will try going around it.  For example, after the Mexican government restricted the deposit of U.S. dollars in Mexican banks and currency exchange houses in 2010, law enforcement witnessed the money launderers using “funnel accounts” and trade-based money laundering to move money and value across the border.  Some observers feel a recent drop in cash seizures could also be the result of new ways of moving money across the border such as prepaid cards.  And, of course, criminals will try to go around, under, and over the border wall.  So countermeasures must take the above into consideration.

Despite criminals’ attempts at bypassing barriers, the numbers suggest tens of billions of cash still cross our southern border every year.  Let’s use $20 billion as a round number.  With the construction of a wall and a few other steps, over a few years we should realistically increase our seizure rate to say 5% or $1 billion a year.  If that holds constant, in 15 years the recovered funds would pay for the wall.

What are the few other steps?

1.         In designing the wall, we should have stopping bulk cash on the northern side of the border in mind as well as thwarting drugs and illegal immigrants coming from the south.  The construction and placement of the physical wall should be done in such a way as will “funnel” currency smugglers to border crossings that will be heavily controlled and monitored.  In other words, just like a successful tactical military maneuver, we will use terrain, barriers, and deploy our resources (technology and personnel) to force smugglers to use routes and border crossings we want them to use. 

2.         Increase border enforcement personnel including Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection.  The Trump Administration has already endorsed this policy.

3.         Use data and advanced analytics to better target bulk cash smugglers just as we target narcotics smugglers and other contraband traffickers.

4.         Treasury’s FinCEN should issue a long-delayed rule that equates prepaid cards with monetary instruments for purposes of cross-border currency declarations.

5.         Systematically crack down on trade-based money laundering.  Both the U.S. and Mexico have Trade Transparency Units (TTUs). With a small increase in personnel and software, these TTUs could be directed to increase their focus on U.S./Mexican trade fraud and “black market peso” operations that are increasingly used by narcotics traffickers to avoid our traditional anti-money laundering countermeasures.

All of the above countermeasures are entirely doable.  Not only do these approaches to combatting criminality adhere to our already-articulated inter-departmental bi-partisan national anti-money laundering strategy, but they should be acceptable as they are self-funding and provide reasonable political cover for all sides.

(Note: An abbreviated version of this proposal was published February 27, 2017 in the Washington Times)

John A. Cassara is a retired U.S. intelligence officer and Treasury Special Agent.  More information is available at www.JohnCassara.com

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/bulk_cash_pays_for_the_wall.html

Trump’s Invisible Wall Keeps Expanding — Tim KIRBY

One of the key wedge issues that makes Americans love or hate Donald Trump is “The Border Wall” as it is a strong reflection of their inner world view. Some see America (and the West as a whole) as being under siege from system draining, ungrateful, illegal immigrants, while others see the country’s “Melting Pot” and openness to be its key strengths. The Wall plays into the narrative of both sides being a means of repression or salvation respectively. However, the actual physical barrier on the border is of far less practical importance to keeping out illegal immigrants, than the invisible barriers that Trump is continuing to erect right now.

Obviously any obstacle or defense can be penetrated. Drugs/weapons find their way into prisons while prisoners at times themselves escape. Guns may be banned in Country X but terrorists always seem to have them. The Berlin wall may have be lined with machine gun nests and barbed wire and yet people got through it. When Trump declared that he would “build a great great wall on our southern border and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall”, many hysterical fanatics on both sides jumped to extremes proclaiming over social media that either The Wall would stop illegal immigration or that it would completely fail regardless of Trump’s efforts. Of course the truth is somewhere in between.

True the Berlin Wall was violated many times, but the amount of people who actually risked prison/death to get to the other side was greatly reduced by its existence. If East Germany saw that they had a critical mission to keep people in, then ultimately their strategy worked overall as very few people actually made it through. Trump’s barrier is similar. It is guaranteed that people will get around it, dig under it, cut through it, but doing so is no easy task. Furthermore, the Berlin Wall sent a message to the population, “you’re staying here, you’re lives are here, get used to it”. The Border Wall sends the message that outsiders are not welcome, that no one wants anyone to come over this border illegally. Essentially it is a giant, anti-welcome mat, and from the perspective of someone who believes that the subconscious is the real battlefield of the 21st century, spending a few billion on a potent message is good government spending.

However, speaking from personal experience, it must be noted that the real means by which people immigrate to a country is by being given the time to be there and build a life in the new location. Jumping over a fence doesn’t just automatically give you a job doing drywall and a monthly welfare check. Immigration takes time, even the illegal kind, thus Trump’s creation of and recent expansion of travel bans of certain foreign nations blocks the ability of people from these countries to “start a life” in America, which is extends The Wall far beyond America’s physical borders.

Often times Work&Travel programs, university study, and other seemingly short term means to enter a country for a half a year or so allow enough time for the individual to start to build a life there even if their source of income is a bit shady. Although, as stated above, no ban/barrier is perfect, when it becomes impossible to exploit a Work&Travel program as a stepping stone to illegal immigration in to the United States, this makes illegally immigrating from a banned country look like a Berlin Wall sprint. There probably are ways to illegally immigrate from countries on the list but the tried and true method of getting into America with some permit and never leaving, for them, is done like a dinner.

People forget that only American citizens have the right to come and go from the territory of the United States freely, and that the USA has the power to reject any non-Americans from crossing the border, for any reason be it fair, unfair, or other. Although there is a lot of political will for a global society and a borderless globalized world the bureaucracy is still built on the idea of there being citizens under the constitution and non-citizens being under someone else’s jurisdiction. Citizens have the keys to the house, non-citizens have to ring the doorbell and wait.

Of course, we should not forget that there is a lot of hypocrisy in Travel Ban in terms of who is on the list. The logic of the list officially is to target nations that create terrorists and “bad guys” from countries America does not like, who pose some sort of general threat. That is the officially stated intent but the reality of the Travel Ban is that it essentially blocks immigration from the countries on the list as it makes getting one’s foot in the door almost impossible.

The choices on the list can be infuriating as terrorist factories like Saudi Arabia are NOT included, where as harmless secular Kyrgyzstan is. On the surface this makes no sense as the amount of dead Americans, killed by Saudi inspired Wahhabism is starting to get pretty large whereas the only crime the Kyrgyz have done to America is ask them to stop using their airport after some unpleasant events like the murder of an ethnic-Russian truck driver by a U.S. Soldier (according to the Kyrgyz side).

The stated official goal of keeping terrorists out by keeping the Kyrgyz out of America is absurd and hypocritical. However, using the terrorism lingo as an excuse to block potential immigrants from a broad range of nations based on absolutely zero logic is a highly effective tactic for the anti-immigration wing of American politics. Trump may seem like a simpleton, but he has built the physical and now bureaucratic infrastructure to make illegal immigration vastly more difficult, just as he promised. The Work&Travel supported visa > Working Illegally > Getting Amnesty\Welfare route is closed for these chosen nations. Trump has built “The Wall” in ways far beyond what anyone expected. The Mexicans may not have paid for it… yet… but that could change in time.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/02/05/trumps-invisible-wall-keeps-expanding/ 

America Has Built 800+ Military Bases Worldwide. So Why Can’t It Build a Mexican Border Wall? - ROBERT BRIDGE

The US government has constructed at tremendous cost to its taxpayers some of the most impressive structures – both architectural and organizational – of all time. Yet somehow it has failed to build a viable wall on the Mexican border.

In 1931, during the Great Depression, the US government began construction of the Hoover Dam, one of the most ambitious civil engineering projects ever attempted. Employing thousands of US laborers, some 100 of whom reportedly lost their lives in the course of the project, the dam is mind-boggling due its sheer size, rivaling that of the pyramids.

At 726 feet tall, the wedge-shaped structure is 660 ft (200 m) thick at its base, narrowing to 45 ft (14 m) at the top, which provides enough room to accommodate a highway connecting Nevada and Arizona. The project required millions of cubic feet of concrete – said to be enough to pave a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York – and tens of millions of pounds of steel.

Many decades later, the US government undertook another extensive project known as the US Embassy in Baghdad. Although rarely discussed in the US media, this 104-acre slice of American property in a foreign country is so immense that it rivals Vatican City in terms of size [the Vatican is an independent city-state, complete with its own euro-based currency and security detail, located inside of Rome].

Officially opened in 2009, the $750 million embassy, which is situated in Baghdad’s so-called Green Zone, is by far the most expansive and expensive embassy in the world. Why does a foreign nation need a footprint the size of a small country to house a few thousand diplomats and private contractors? That is a very good question, but one that was never really pursued by legislators when Congress approved plans in 2005 for the mega structure under the Bush administration.

To this day, much of the complex remains under heavy wraps due to “security concerns.” Yet this behemoth cash cow continues to suck money dry from government coffers; in 2012, just several years after its construction was finished, the Obama administration requested and got more than $100 million for a "massive" upgrade to the compound.

Speaking of Iraq, which suffered military conquest at the hands of US-led forces starting in 2003, the United States also managed to find ways to construct some 900+ military bases around the world. Needless to say, this is no cheap venture, and helps to explain why the US military budget is approaching $1 trillion dollars annually – more than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, United Kingdom, and Japan combined.

In light of these monumental projects, it goes without saying that the United States certainly possesses the technical prowess and the financial wherewithal to perform the simple task of building a wall, and more specifically, a wall on the Mexican border. Yet thus far, and despite the fact that Donald Trump pledged on the campaign trail that would be his first task in office, the wall remains – a bit like Barack Obama’s past promise to shut down Guantanamo Bay detention center – a pipe dream.

How did we Americans arrive at a place where such a fundamental element of nationhood – that is, the ability to control our borders from any and all outside illegal intruders – is considered a radical concept? Since when did the universally accepted idea of a strong national border become an issue for debate and contention among our legislators? Since when have weak, porous borders become a desired state of affairs for a global superpower, and especially one that has a habit of attacking sovereign states? Part of the answer seems to lie within the present atmosphere of political correctness and identity politics that has conflated the need for a strong border with racism and even white supremacist ideology. More on that in a moment.

Just this week, part of the South American ‘caravan’ that the US mainstream media had called a “myth” has turned up on America’s doorstep in the Mexican town of Tijuana. Images show dozens of young men straddling the top of the border fence with none of the US troops that Trump activated in sight. Now, if the US Democrats had their way, these thousands of illegal aliens would be awarded amnesty and shepherded into ‘sanctuary cities’ where these individuals would slip undetected into the fabric of American society. And for those – including the US president – who voice opposition to this invasion, they are casually branded as racist or a white supremacist. However, the real motivation for the Democrats behind such ad hominem attacks is raw political opportunism.

The Democrats are actually building part of their platform on awarding asylum to illegals, and despite the fact that many of these people are not suffering political repression back home. In fact, most of these people just want to improve their financial well-being. In other words, the great majority of these new arrivals – as was established by on-the-ground interviews – are economic migrants. 

And who can blame anyone for wanting a better life? After all, it was the incentive of economic opportunity that first brought millions of migrants to America in the first place. However, the difference between the migrants from past generations and many of those arriving today is that the former went through a lengthy legal process for entering the country. Today, it's even worse than just a matter of legality; it's a matter of criminality on multiple fronts.

What the US mainstream media fails to inform the American public is that the overwhelming majority of people from this so-called ‘caravan’ are young, male and oftentimes dangerous. This much was confirmed by Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch, one of the only Western journalists to actually travel to South America and report on the march of migrants firsthand. In addition to reporting that, in his estimation, some 98 percent of the migrants were young and male, he added that some of them bore tattoos that identified them as members of the notorious MS13 international crime gang. To get a better understanding of this caravan and the true makeup of its participants I would encourage the reader to watch Farrell’s interview in its entirety.

Now this leads us to the question of constructing a wall on the US-Mexico border. To date, those efforts have gone fizzled. In March, Congress passed its trillion-dollar spending bill; glaringly missing from the numerous pages was funding for construction of Trump’s wall. Instead, $1.6 billion was put aside for “border security,” as well as replacing parts of the existing fence. In other words, nothing that will prevent illegals from entering the United States.

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan said this week that the Trump White House has one last chance – with a lame duck Republican Congress still in place – to secure funding for the US-Mexican border wall.

 “We should be focused on that one main thing over the next several weeks as we still have a few weeks left while Republicans control all of government,” Jordan said in an interview.

Time is ticking like a bomb for the American people to restore control over its southern border, and there is no good excuse for not completing this monumental project. Americans should not be cowered by accusations of ‘racism,’ when the country itself has been founded on the blood, sweat and tears of migrants throughout history. Much of the so-called racism that exists in America is a figment of the media's hyperactive imagination. Nor should the expense of the project – considering the price tag for so many other US adventures and misadventures, up to and including wars abroad – be a reason for preventing it. 

The overall cost of failing to protect America’s border will far excel the total price of a wall if action is not taken now. It's time for America to act like a real nation – a superpower with a backbone – and protect its border.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/11/20/america-has-built-800-military-bases-worldwide-why-cant-build-mexican-border-wall.html

The Problem with "the Wall" - By Mark A. Hewitt

When Donald Trump began his presidential campaign with what was considered incendiary comments: “When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best... they're sending people that have lots of problems” and that he would complete the United States-Mexico border fence and “make Mexico pay for it.” 

After my five years with the U.S. Border Patrol stationed along the southwest border, I learned much regarding the efforts to solve the 2,000-mile-long border fence and illegal border crossing interface. The United States and Mexico share several significant natural barriers, hundreds of miles of treacherous open desert, from California to Texas, and several impenetrable and unscalable canyons of the Rio Grande River valley. When you exclude the impassable areas of the border as a conduit for illegal border crossings, you can focus on those areas that require additional man-made barriers and law enforcement deterrents…..

(Full text at link below)

To stop the flow requires a fundamental shift in ideology in policing illegal immigration. Strategic and impenetrable fencing augmented by more border control agents, in high-intensity drug trafficking areas, especially those focused on intercepting and preventing illegal entries at the border, have proven to be the correct solution in stemming the flow of illegals and contraband, and for Europe, undesirable refugees. Pictures of frustrated refugees on one side of a heavily protected and sturdy fence with numerous border guards on the other epitomizes the deterrent and collaborative effect of fencing and enforcement. If the cops go home, the illegals will defeat the fence. If the border agents are resilient and maintain their presence and vigilance, the refugees go somewhere else.

Policies focused on finding and deporting illegal immigrants who had already crossed the border have been negated by this administration and other Democratic administrations. There may be a few intrepid individuals that succeed in defeating Mother Nature’s barriers. I was in a Marine Corps Search and Rescue unit in Yuma, Arizona in the late 70s; it was not uncommon for us to find in the desert the remains of illegal border crossers. Some will always try their luck, to go around the border fence that stops in the middle of the desert. 

The Clinton administration withheld operations and maintenance funding for the Border Patrol as a way to remove Border Patrol agents from the field in order to facilitate greater illegal crossings. In 1995, President Clinton wouldn’t say, “Don’t do your job and look the other way.” We had Border Patrol agents who would buy gas with their own money to take a USBP vehicle to “go to work” and chase illegal aliens. My favorite anecdote was that it was so bad under the IN&S and President Clinton that some agents siphoned gas from the seized cars of drug smugglers so they could interdict and apprehend illegal aliens. At that time, the Border Patrol still apprehended a million illegal aliens annually -- and deported them -- while reporting at least two million illegal aliens “got away.”

The Obama administration has told U.S. Border Patrol Agents to not do their job, to not interdict illegal aliens crossing the border, that if they didn’t like the policy that they could find another line of work. This policy obviously and effectively removes border guards from the strategic fencing in those cities and ports of entry, as well as those who would patrol the border. Any fencing was rendered immaterial by the direction of the president to stand down. Also, the policy has effectively grounded every Border Patrol pilot. 

The presidential candidates have recently advocated for up to 20,000 additional Border Patrol Agents in addition to “a Southern wall” or more robust strategic fencing. A headline: "Border Crime Taking a Toll on Residents in Southwest New Mexico, Arizona". “Residents have said state Highway 80 has become a favorite for Mexican cartel drug runners who manage to navigate out of the Peloncillo Mountains along the Arizona-New Mexico border. They want an even more increased presence from the U.S. Border Patrol.”

America needs several walls along the Southwest border as well as a policy of enforcing the immigration laws already on the books.  When the Border Patrol is able to do their jobs, they apprehended and deported a million illegal aliens annually; actions that weren’t hard or unreasonable. It’s the law. 

Ask a Border Patrol Agent where “a wall” needs to be built and how to prevent illegal immigration -- not a politician.

Mark A. Hewitt was with the U.S. Border Patrol for five years.  He recounts some of his experiences with the Border Patrol in his espionage thrillers, Special Access and Shoot Down.  

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/03/the_problem_with_the_wall.html#ixzz428xmUkOc