The $8B estimate was for an Israel-style wall, as I mentioned. Several levels, and all that. Much more secure than the San Diego wall. But we'll use your estimate.
$3.3B to build it. How much to man it? Patrol it? Maintain it? How many more billions per year will it cost to truly seal off the border?
And when I say it's not going to happen, I don't mean to imply that I don't want it to happen. I'm just saying that no Congressman, no Senator and no President is going to give up any of their own personal pork to pay for it. And none of them will put their power behind it. Spending money for the troops is one thing. Allocating billions of dollars for a border wall is quite another. None of them have the stomach for it.
Certainly W will never allow it, and who in Congress will stand up to him?
"$3.3B to build it. How much to man it? Patrol it?"
Less than it would take to
You've got to understand US government finances- billions of dollars are nothing to these people- they just borrow more money. They don't have to give up their precious pork- they can have it and the border wall as well. They will get votes off of each which is all they care about.
Anyway, I won't try to convince you anymore, but I would repeat that for those who are tired of just flapping their gums about the immigration issue, this is something concrete you can and should propose to your Congressmen.
Giving up and thinking nothing will ever change lets these b*stards in Congress off the hook. They WANT you to think that.
No offense but - so what?
Do you have point, 'cept nope, can't (won't) be done'.
Then we have 'other cots' to the USA - like illegals getting in auto accidents, which WE wind up paying for, Illegals getting 97 gazillion traffic citations, which they skip out on, or get a $25 'pretend' fine because the judge knows 'Juan' will freaking disappear.
Or the growing and disturbing trend of DRUNKEN (hard working /s) illegals killing people on the highways at 2:00 a.m. Hell in any area where illegals have a major footprint, driving after 11:00 pm is like playing Russian Roulette.
Oh and one more 'cost'; Housing-Property Values. When Illegals move in an area that area looses BIG. Because they are uneducated and un-skilled they immediately depress any area they move into. My old neighborhood in Chi was "Middle Class", it is now 90% 'Hispanic' and is 'poverty level'. Any whites who've remained have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in property value.
W's political cash will soon be blown. He's already hated by the left, now he's losing his support on the right faster than a stone in a pond. He'll get nothing done the rest of his term. Any border proposal he puts up pushing amnesty and kissing up to Fox will be dead on arrival. He can't antagonize both sides and expect anyone to listen to him.
We're already paying a couple of thousand of people to patrol the border. Seems to me that the wall would make the job a lot easier and less expensive to patrol the border. Assign one person per ten miles for each of three shifts, and that's only 600 border guards per day. That would allow each guard to make two to to three passes an hour or more over the ten mile stretch, and while breaches will happen, busting through, under, or over the wall is something the border guards ought to be able to discover and plug pretty quickly.