Posted on 05/21/2006 4:58:16 AM PDT by ovrtaxt
The federal government will have to reach deep into taxpayers' pockets if it goes ahead with plans to build a security wall along the U.S.-Mexican border it could cost at least $3 million per mile.
That's $568.18 per foot.
President Bush this week sent Congress a $1.9 billion request to increase border security. But that money would go not only for new fencing, but also for 1,000 new Border Patrol agents, the temporary deployment of up to 6,000 National Guard troops, two new surveillance aircraft and five helicopters.
In December the House voted to build a security barrier with a double set of steel walls, floodlights, surveillance cameras and motion detectors along 700 miles of the 1,952-mile border.
The Senate this week voted to build 370 miles of barrier.
After the House vote, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., estimated that the 700-mile barrier would cost $2.2 billion, or about $3 million mile.
But that estimate could be way off the mark.
NewsMax looked toward Israel as an example and found that the 425-mile complex of fences, concrete walls, trenches and razor wire it is building along its border with the West Bank will cost $1.56 billion, or $3.67 million per mile in an area where labor costs are far lower than in the United States.
The San Diego experience points to even higher costs.
A 14-mile, 15-foot-high double fence is now under construction near San Diego. Roughly $39 million has been spent on the project so far, and Homeland Security plans to spend $35 million more.
"If that $74 million is enough to finish the job [Border Patrol says the cost could keep rising] and the price is multiplied over the proposed 700 miles, the new fence could run $3.7 billion," the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
"Even that estimate doesn't take into account the expense of purchasing or condemning many miles of privately owned land abutting the border or of potential legal challenges."
At $3.7 billion, the 700-mile fence would cost $5.28 million per mile or an astounding $1,000 per foot.
The fence near San Diego has slowed the flood of illegal aliens traveling through the border city of Imperial Beach, Calif., from about 2,000 a day to just a few a day on average.
That has driven aliens and drug smugglers to more remote and treacherous migration routes, and migrants increasingly hire smugglers to help them make the three-day hike through parched terrain a tactic they could use to circumvent the new 700-mile fence.
So building the fence could turn out to be an expensive boondoggle, according to Mike Allen, director of the McAllen, Texas, Economic Development Corp.
"We want people to support our immigration laws because we live here," said Allen, whose home is half a mile from the border.
"But this will be a tremendous waste of money, and it will not stop immigration. People will just go around it."
The only solution that will work, according to a number of anti-immigration activist groups, is to build the fence along the entire 1,952-mile border.
I'm 100% for it. The Minutemen are awesome!
Build a canal on the border while we are at it. I'm sure passage fees from shipping would pay for this real quick. These politicians have no imaginations. They can say YES YES YES to all kinds of spending but when it comes to the southern border they say NO NO NO. Makes one wonder why they are saying NO.
"If cost is really the problem, set up an account to accept donations.
I'll buy my foot of wall. "
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You can do exactly that at minutemanHQ.com - they plan to begin building a wall in a few days.
I think they should consider putting their plan on E-bay and auction individual pieces of fence - please bid on YOUR piece of the fence which will be honored with a name plaque enscribed with your name. Wouldn't that be great?
"I am sure that would be the case. In any event, the cost issue is just a smokescreen. The people who raise it have an agenda, which is do nothing to secure the border except have a virtual wall. We have heard the analogies to the Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China to ridicule and demonize anyone who suggests that fences actually work. They should be built where it makes sense in terms of security effectiveness.
Given the demographic and economic pressures from Mexico and Latin America, it is not a matter of if physical barriers will be built, but when."
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You have said it well. The people in favor of putting a lot of bodies on the border absolutely miss the point. Bodies may work in the short term, but there is a big cost associated with lots of bodies. Put up a lasting ASSET, a fence, then the cost of enforcement will go waaaaay down and the results will go waaay up and the overall cost will become very palatable after 2 - 3 years.
Witness Israel's still young experiences with keeping the moronic, fascist crazies out of their country - how does a country measure the cost of lives lost to sadists anyway?
It won't cost that much if we use illegal invaders and prisoners to build it.
And the cost of illegal invaders in prison space, social service costs, etc, FAR outweighs any border wall.
Let's build a couple of them.
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3 million a whole mile sounds like a bargain to me.
"How many millions for each mile for Houston's downtown choo choo?"
Shall we even bring up the Swimmer's darling project - "the Big Dig?" (BTW, it leaks)
I imagine most ranchers and other rural landowners would be happy to donate the land neccessary for a wall inasmuch as their property is being trashed.
Not to mention the fact that trying to stay on their property is becoming more dangerous all the time.
I've posted several links early in the thread, which demonstrate the relative social service costs vs. a wall. The wall would be very very cheap, even at high estimates.
Indeed! And whether it's overpriced or not, at least there's a derived benefit, which is more than we can say for the wasting of most of the rest of our tax dollars.
I agree with you.
I support the wall.
Ship all the illegals down there, have them build the wall, then put them on the other side and pay them to dig a moat - two problems solved.
But we'll never do it.
Americans have bencome woman-hearted.
How about a "border wall" check off on your taxes.
Chump change...Heritage estimates the out year costs of the 'compromise plan' on welfare alone at $50 Billion a year.
Build the wall, build it quick and build it high.
Why don't we hire a contractor from Mexico so he can legally hire Mexicans? ;o)
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