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It will require upkeep. But illegal immigration poses a heavy toll on taxpayers so that massive savings will need to be taken into account. And as I mentioned in a previous post there are tens of billion of taxes to be collected from non-complying employers who are cheating Americans with black market illegal labor. One year of these taxes would build the fence and maintain it for a decade.

We already have 11,000 people patrolling. The fence will make them tremendously more effective because it will slow the invaders down long enough for them to get on the scene and make an arrest.

Currently, without a fence our Border Patrol has to spread out over an area 20 miles deep into the desert on our side of the border. For a 2000 mile border that means they are patrolling 40,000 square miles or one agent per 3.6 square miles assuming agents worked 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. In reality, the density of agents is much lower. They are very spread out and it is very easy to get by them. Thousands get by successfully every night.

With a fence the Border Patrol will be able to focus on a line 50 feet wide. For a 2000 mile border that will mean that they are paroling a long thin strip which totals only 20 square miles. That means Border Patrol Agent density will be 0.002 square miles per agent. They will be very close together and it will be much more difficult to penetrate the border undetected. With the existing personnel we will get much denser coverage of our border.

Ladders won't work fast enough if they have to penetrate coiled siege wire, a ditch, a fence, a second fence and then more coiled siege wire. Movement sensors would give Border Patrol Agents plenty of time to get on the scene in most cases. In areas near San Diego it works very well so we know it is effective. If we catch one, we will probably not shoot him unless he gives due cause. We would likely arrest him just like we do now. But with a very tight border, a lot less illegals will be even making the attempt so the workload will taper off. A little meaningful enforcement buys a lot of compliance.

As far as tunnels go, at that point we have won. Tunnels will be very expensive to dig and while they might be cost effective for drugs they will never makes sense except for the very best paying illegals. Of the 25 or so tunnels discovered so far, most were found before they were complete which means they were a lost investment for the smugglers. I don't claim a fence will be perfect but right now we have over half a million people coming per year which is several thousand per day. How long do you think a tunnel would go undiscovered if several thousand people started emerging from it every night?