The Trump campaign saw few consistent campaign promises, but one of them was that a “beautiful” Wall will be built between the US and Mexican border, and that the Mexican people would pay for it. While the latter has been explicitly ruled out by the Mexican government, the former is still, according to one GOP representative, very much on the table.
Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas has had building such a wall as his pet project for a while, and spoke to Fox & Friends about the issue:
It’s amazing what you can get Congress to do when you lead and push them in the right direction. And actually, you know, we had appropriated money during the bush administration that didn’t get spent for the wall, so, yeah, it’s going to be great to have somebody that’s actually following the law.
Gohmert also claims that money used to process illegal immigrants could instead be diverted to the wall project. The problem, however, is that the wall may be literally impossible, financially and logistically. On the financial end, Trump’s plan to tax remittances sent to Mexico has a collection of flaws that have been pointed out by policy and financial experts, the most basic of which is that it would require extraordinary action on the part of Congress to make possible.
Logistically, an engineer looking at the plan noted that human beings have constructed a two-thousand foot wall precisely once in their history, and that to fit the plan Trump was insisting on, over 12 million cubic yards of concrete would be necessary. Similarly, it’d be necessary to maintain this concrete, constantly, as any homeowner can tell you that time quickly wears on even the best concrete job.
The wall would also not address where illegal immigration is increasing. Illegal immigration from Mexico has been declining for years, a trend that the election of Trump will likely encourage. More illegal immigrants are arriving from Asia and Central America, usually through ports. The irony is that a wall would probably keep illegal immigrants in.
In short, like any large, ambitious government project, the wall with Mexico will have financial considerations that the government is unlikely to anticipate. That may be something taxpayers should consider, as the wall is debated in Congress.
(via Politico)