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.
You obviously don't spend much time around schools these days. As a teacher for 12 years, I can tell you without hesitation, that the work ethic of our young people has gone to hell. As a witness to local farms who CANNOT, no matter what they pay, find Americans who will work (they show up for a day, sweat a little putting levy gates in, and quit), I can verify that America's work ethic (as a whole) has gone downhill, and not just in labor jobs.
And as long as we continue to import our laborers, it's only going to get worse. How many NO residents are still without work and/or displaced? Why the heck are they not in NO helping with the rebuilding (not saying that none are...)? My understanding is that NO had a very high unemployement rate prior to the hurricane - so where are all of them? Still getting free housing from FEMA?
These costs aren't anywhere near staggering. They are a miniscule fraction of the costs of health care and public education for illegals. I have posted numerous links which document the numbers.
And walls DO work. Sure, a few will get through, but San Diego won't have the daily track meet across the interstate like they do now.
There's no good economic reason to NOT build it.
sigh......
Maybe I didn't make it clear enough.
READ THE LINKS!! A wall is cheap!
But it's still a waste of money if those already here, and future invaders are rewarded for their efforts by granting them amnesty (by any other name is still amnesty...guest worker, etc.) The only way we SAVE any money in building the fence/wall is if we deport those already here illegally.
Guest worker isn't amnesty. It's like a green card. However, if you're referring to a guest worker program that allows the illegals to magically be legal...well then yes that is amnesty.
I estimated it would be about the same as an interstate a long time ago. Not that it has to be, it's just what Bush et. al. will force it to be. For example, you don't have to litigate anything, if private land owners don't want the fence, just let the illegals be focused through their land.
This doesn't need to be the Great Wall of China to be effective.
A dirt berm with razor wire would suffice.
Unless its well guarded a wall wont stop them anyway.
As bad as you think it is, we still have a long way to go before we catch up to say, the French. I hire and subcontract lots of hard working legal labor in an area that doesn't have much of a Mexican work force. I know there are certain jobs I have to pay a premium on because of the lack of Mexican labor. For instance I pay about 33% more for masonry work than I would if I were a hour away in the big city where there is a Mexican labor force.
The cost of not building the wall(and backing it up) is far greater than the piddling dollars mentioned.
"There's more to do of course, but reasonable people can see he has made great progress towards what we want."
No, reasonable people can see that the amnesty provisions will result in an influx of 50 million ill educated quasi slaves who are basically socialists. The smoke and mirrors to appease conservatives can't obfuscate the fact that this is an empire breaker. Hello Tiajuana.
Remember when? Accompanied by the usual hoopla, President Bush approved the National Intelligence Reform Act on December 17, 2004 that included adding 10,000 border patrol agents in the next five years. About 80% of the agents were to be assigned to the southern border. SF Chronicle However, by Monday, February 7, 2005, when the Bush Budget was released, the number of border patrol agents to be hired shrunk to 210. This was explained by the Administration as a reflection of "the lack of money for an army of border guards and the capacity to train them."[SFGate.com is merely republishing an article from Michael Hedges of the Houston Chronicle.]
Why is it that they never report the details of pork barrel projects, but this, oh boy, we've got to hyperventilate.
He's still pushing the damned amnesty/path to citizenship, isn't he. If that happens, none of the rest of his supposed "concessions" matter at all, because as soon as the massive crop of illegals are able to vote, we will have an irreversible shift to total socialism in the USA. The Republican party will disappear and the Democrats will gain permanent control. We will become, in essence, Mexico.
How about like the walls that line urban interstates shielding residential areas.
They are often 20 feet high and are made of prestressed concrete modular componants. They are apparently the most cost effective solution because they are everywhere.
All those FEMA trailers sitting up in Arkansas, move them down to the border to house the volunteers. I'm sure that there a plenty of peoperty owners that would allow temporary work camps.
So the solution is to allow 160,000 people (120,000 of whom are sent back) a month to cross our southern border and not build physical barriers? Should we dismantle the ones we already have, including the 23 mile long fence south of San Diego?
The reason walls erected by tyrants worked was because potential escapees were ruthlessly and summarily shot on sight, as in Berlin.
Are you equating the construction of physical barriers on our southern border to keep people out to the Berlin Wall, which kept people in? If so, you are certifiable. I lived four years in Berlin (1983-87). West Berlin was an island surrounded by East Germany. Not only was there a wall surrounding West Berlin, but there were fences and walls separating East from West Germany.
If anything, using your analogy, Mexico is the corrupt tyranny with 40% of its people living below the poverty line who are trying to flee into the US, the equivalent of West Berlin. The problem is that we cannot absorb every Mexican that wants to enter the US and unlike the East Gewrmans who fled to West Germany, we don't share a common culture and language with the Mexicans.
What is your solution to stop the 500,000 to 850,000 illegal aliens who are coming into the US annually and now number anywhere from 11 to 20 million?
Cut out the welfare and other benefits of every kind and go after the employers of the illegals at little cost. That'll stop the influx and start an exodus. This is the one plan the White House doesn't want.
I should have been more clear in stating that conservatives, including many here, are actually HAPPY with this second-choice bone (a wall) thrown at them to keep them quiet....oh, brother.
The first and only choice is the one stated above.....but the President will never do this as he doesn't seem to mind the invasion and is for amnesty. He knows the idea of the fun and games of building a highly-visible, behemoth, high-tech wall will keep everyone (especially security moms and techies) entertained and riveted for a long time while the actual pro-invasion program keeps going on as planned in the background.
The idea of the cost of the wall versus the cost of health care and education for the illegals is a false choice. Neither is acceptable.
BTW, what's the Adminstration's position on anchor babies, one of the greatest rip-offs in present-day American history? Don't answer. I already know the issue is NOT being addressed, nor will it.
As every golfer should know, the Adminstration wants you to keep your eyes on the Wall.
Leni
Yep, its like locks on the backdoor for keeping out a theif.
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