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Why is there so little discussion of an economic justification for building The Border Wall?(VANITY)
January 12, 2019 | rlmorel

Posted on 01/12/2019 10:31:38 PM PST by rlmorel

I find it interesting that there seem to be few analysis pieces that show the cost of illegal immigration to this country annually, and compare it to the cost of a wall, never mind just $5 Billion of the wall Trump is asking for in the 2019 budget.

I tried to construct an analogy that might resonate more with normal people...when you talk about billions here or trillions there, it tends to lose impact. The numbers are too big for us to relate to. Also, I tried to think of it from a business perspective.

Imagine you were a farmer with a rodent problem that was causing you to lose money. So you bring in a consultant, and after looking at your situation, they come to you and say this to you:


"Farmer Smith...on your property, there is a breeding area of rodents that cost you approximately $5,400 per year in lost crops, various rodent damages, lawsuits from customers with rodent feces in their product, inspections to monitor rodent feces in your crops.

We have a your operations statement that shows these losses annually, and you have not only lost $5,400 worth of crops this year, you have lost that much each year for the last 10 years, and will lose that much each year for for the next ten years. Over twenty years, you will lose over $108,000 on this problem

My propose to reduce the money you pay on this issue will be a solution that will cost us a total of $500 this year and each year for the next four years after that for a total of a $2,500 capital outlay, but your problem will cost you annually only $250 a year after that to maintain it.

That means: that once the solution is in place, you will still be losing money to rodents (our estimate that at worst, you will only lose a third of what you normally do (to all the loss and mitigation, inspector fees, etc. which will save you, even after annual maintenance costs, $3,314 every year.

What do you say, Farmer Smith? Do you want to spend the money to fix this issue and increase your financial situation, or do you simply want to lose more and more money each year?"


What person in their right mind wouldn't look at that and say "Hell Yeah, let's do that. Let's spend that money on the solution. I know it won't eliminate the issue, but it makes it far more manageable. I'll have to kick in the money each year to pay the bill to keep the solution working, but...it will be worth it."

I tried to use those numbers above for a specific reason...because the $500 translates to $5 Billion, the amount Trump wants in the budget. So, the study at the Heritage Foundation on the costs of illegal immigration (which I think lowballs the number but just for the sake of the argument, we will go with a low estimate) says that the USA spends $54 Billion in just money on illegals each year. Over twenty years, that is over $1.08 Trillion dollars.

Trump is asking for $5 billion to begin the wall, and one estimate from an analyst at Fox news pegged the total cost to build the wall at $25 Billion. I'll use that number.

If the wall brings illegal immigration to a third of what it was in the first year it is complete and operational, we would save $32.5 Billion right off the top in year one.

$32.5 Billion dollars saved by increasing our security, decreasing crime and incarceration by illegals, all those things that go along with it.

And these are lowball numbers. I believe the cost of illegal immigration is between $100-200 Billion a year when you add medical care, schooling, incarceration, bilingual education, you name it, so I think realistically it is 2-4x the low estimate. So we could potentially save $68 billion to $136 billion a year, even if the cost of the wall is $50 billion to $200 billion, once it is spent, we still save that money each year, and each going forward.

Why on God's Earth would we NOT build this wall?

NOTE: The Heritage Foundation study "The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer" that put the number I used at $54 billion a year is a good read and well done one, even if I do think it low-balls the cost to taxpayers. I am guessing it is close to $200 billion dollars a year.

If I made a mistake in constructing this analogy and screwed up moving a comma and missing by a factor of ten somewhere...I apologize!


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: illegal; immigration; thewall
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A lot of the discussion about The Wall centers on the leftist arguments regarding its morality or the conservative Constitutional grounds for supporting it.

Leftists unsurprisingly paint The Wall as immoral based on their posturing and social justice stupidity (there is nothing in the least immoral about building a wall) while conservatives rightfully frame it as an issue of sovereignty.

I know that the Media has now interest in discussing the economic aspect of illegal immigration, but I don't understand why proponents of building The Wall don't pound this issue.

1 posted on 01/12/2019 10:31:38 PM PST by rlmorel
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To: rlmorel

You aren’t going to reason anyone into changing their mind about this issue. It’s not about reason, you are wasting your time.


2 posted on 01/12/2019 10:37:11 PM PST by SaxxonWoods (The internet has driven the world mad.)
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To: SaxxonWoods

I know it isn’t for the Left, but it is about reason on our side of the line.


3 posted on 01/12/2019 10:46:27 PM PST by rlmorel (Leftists: They believe in the "Invisible Hand" only when it is guided by government.)
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To: rlmorel

Bump for later.


4 posted on 01/12/2019 10:51:06 PM PST by TChad
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To: rlmorel

Stating a economic case makes it sound like its only about money and not the larger picture of human behavior and the concept of cost/benefit. Republicans are backing the President’s policies, so our side does not need more convincing. The Democrats pretend their policies have no negative financial or human costs, until it threatens them politically. Pragmatically, this means a economic argument doesn’t help right now, although perhaps it should.


5 posted on 01/12/2019 11:43:32 PM PST by Widget Jr
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To: rlmorel
Why is there so little discussion does the Main Stream Media ignore discussion of an economic justification for building The Border Wall?

Fixed that!
6 posted on 01/13/2019 12:14:28 AM PST by Mr Radical (In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act)
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To: rlmorel

because republicans do NOT know how to win- Everytime a democrat ignorantly proclaims how ‘expensive a wall would be’- republicans should be flooding the airwaves with the FACTS that prove that not building a wall is costing us between $400 BILLION DOLLARS and $600 BILLION DOLLARS per year, EVERY single year- and the cost just keeps going up and up-

This argument is an EASILY won argument against the left- and will expose the idiocy of the liberal mindset every time- but the right doesn’t like winning I guess-


7 posted on 01/13/2019 12:37:45 AM PST by Bob434
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To: rlmorel

[[If the wall brings illegal immigration to a third of what it was in the first year it is complete and operational, we would save $32.5 Billion right off the top in year one.]]

That is just in direct costs- indirect costs will save this country $200 BILLION DOLLARS every single year if we cut down just 1/2 of the costs by building a wall- Several studies have been done that show that it is estimated that illegals cost this country between $400 BILLION DOLLARS and $600 BILLION DOLLARS in both direct and indirect costs due to illegals and the damage they do to this country and our citizens, and these estimates were done many years ago-


8 posted on 01/13/2019 12:40:33 AM PST by Bob434
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To: rlmorel

Anybody with a lick of sense knows it will save money.

The dollars from border traffic flowing to politicians and others must greatly outweigh the money saved by shutting it off.


9 posted on 01/13/2019 1:26:08 AM PST by Califreak (Your Tagline Here)
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To: Califreak

The wall is about permanently changing the demographics of the USA. A wall would slow down the demographic change and that angers many. Money to build it is irrelevant. It is actually a simple project. It is being built on undisturbed land with no existing utilities in an area of year round good weather. There is no software involved and no new risky technology. It is just a concrete footing to which a barrier can be bolted.


10 posted on 01/13/2019 2:18:02 AM PST by Stevenfo
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To: Stevenfo

I think the only way it will work is to convince the poor people and the people on guberment handouts that they are getting screwed because so much money is being spent on illegals.

Anyone with common sense can see the big picture and understand it. Dem voters have been dumbed down to be controllable. All they understand is the money their either have in their checks or don’t.

If someone could make them see they have to share their freebees with illegals the pressure would be on.


11 posted on 01/13/2019 2:34:06 AM PST by oldasrocks
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To: rlmorel
You're on the right track, rlmorel.  Numbers are visual and powerful.

And I think the Trump administration and the think tanks are failing us because they don't make the argument more visual.  Text is great, but it needs to be supplemented with charts, diagrams, and video for maximum effectiveness.

To have a greater impact, the numbers need to pop out at you.  We have countless government agencies pumping out statistics.  Why can't they present this data in a way people can understand it?  If they did, they would have no competition from the Fake Media who are lazy and lack imagination.

Now one reason our government doesn't do this is they are afraid to fire up the public to learn how our money is being wasted.  Manipulating the data and presenting it in complicated way is part of the bureaucracy/Deep State conspiracy.

But that let go.  Trump can certainly force his agencies to do the research and come back with the analysis and show it in a compelling way.  When Trump was pitching the politicians to build Trump International Chicago, he must have presented all sorts of cool architectural renderings and presentations to sell it.

Yet it has been done.  Think about that marvelous video the Trump team created to influence NK's Kim Jong Un.  Let's have more of the same!

How about a breakdown of the major cost items of illegal immigration?  What I have in mind is a large infograph that allows thoughtful people to explore and learn about the costs of illegal immigration: economics costs, law enforcement costs, humanitarian costs, voting corruption costs, lost opportunity costs, and tremendous cost in life and violence that the Mexican cartels exact on people seeking to cross the border.

Here's a cool infograph, for instance:


12 posted on 01/13/2019 3:33:16 AM PST by poconopundit
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To: rlmorel
Some years ago, Canada's Alberta province, made a decision that eliminating rats from the province was well worth the cost to damage to their rich grain crop.

They have a three mile wide buffer zone from the US border to provincial borders extending as far north as rats can live.

They are extreme about it. Try to bring a pet rat into the buffer zone and it will be seized and destroyed in addition to possible seizure of the vehicle and massive fines. If one gets into the zone on its own, they will find it, poison it and even bulldoze buildings down to destroy it if necessary.

The cost is massive but trivial compared to the savings in crop losses. The analogy to a wall or other border barrier applies here.

We could even live without a wall if eligibility for public assistance was strictly limited to citizens and people legally here (other than life saving medical care and a quick trip home). But it is not. The libtards and their judges see to it that illegals get massive public assistance, including legal resources, that an American who has paid into the system all their lives cannot even get.

13 posted on 01/13/2019 5:36:08 AM PST by Vigilanteman (The politicized state destroys all aspects of civil society, human kindness and private charity.)
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To: oldasrocks
If someone could make them see they have to share their freebees with illegals the pressure would be on.

But they don't have to share their freebies, do they? The social welfare program costs keep increasing and monies that could otherwise go to infrastructure improvements are re-allocated into food, housing and obamaphone payments.

Every illegal in this country has a sob story and we are the intolerant ones for wanting to put the needs of the American citizen first.

We are in a "Death by a thousand cuts" cycle and I see no end in sight.

14 posted on 01/13/2019 5:37:14 AM PST by LSAggie
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To: poconopundit

I agree with what you are saying.

picture worth a thousand words.

keep it simple


15 posted on 01/13/2019 5:42:46 AM PST by thinden
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To: rlmorel

It isn’t discussed anywhere other than conservative media because the “big media” knows that the facts are not on their side.


16 posted on 01/13/2019 5:44:56 AM PST by Wonder Warthog (The Hog of Steel and NRA Life Member)
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To: rlmorel

The bottom rung of the success ladder used to be factory jobs, construction, landscaping and other low skilled jobs. I had one of those jobs when I was young which helped me to develop a work ethic and helped me financially to get through college. The globalists have sawed off the bottom rung and flung it the to 3rd world worlders to feast on.


17 posted on 01/13/2019 5:47:15 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn)
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To: rlmorel

Not sure where you’ve been but there has been a ton of discussion about how the wall would save mega money in money not used to support illegals who were blocked from coming in.


18 posted on 01/13/2019 6:37:05 AM PST by Boomer ( Leftism is toxic poison to a free society.)
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To: rlmorel
Reason with libs?

They will rag on you for comparing poor lost souls looking for better life with rats!

19 posted on 01/13/2019 6:44:11 AM PST by going hot (happiness is a momma deuce)
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To: rlmorel

The Fake News folks ignore/bury it because Trump has already stated the economic advantages.


20 posted on 01/13/2019 6:53:22 AM PST by trebb (Don't howl about illegal leeches while not donating to FR - it's hypocritical.)
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