Blog Stage 7: Is the wall ever going to go up?

Is the wall ever going to go up?

The infamous wall promised to be built on the Mexico-U.S border has been something everyone has been talking about since Trump announced his campaign for this past elections. The wall was promised to be built in order to keep illegal immigrants and violent drug cartels from Mexico, out. As said by President Trump, this wall would be, “Impenetrable. Physical. Tall. Powerful” with no gaps and would replace the steel barbed fences creating the border right now. With this wall projected to cost billions of dollars, President Trump has promised that American tax payers wouldn’t have to pay a single penny for the wall, but if we don’t pay then who does, and how do we know that its necessary to go to such extremes to stop illegal immigration and the drug cartels?

This nearly 2,000-mile wall is said to prevent immigrants from coming into the country completely by having a variety of sensors, an anti-dig base, and an anti-climb cap. But is all of this really necessary to keep immigrants looking for opportunity out of the country-especially since the project seems so costly? Research done by the Department of Homeland Security shows that illegal border crossing has dropped by thirty percent in the last three months and overall has decreased by sixty-four percent since March 2016. With such a drastic drop in illegal immigration without going to the extremes of building a wall, it seems almost unnecessary to move forward with this project. Instead of investing billions of dollars to build a wall that will create more problems as families are torn apart and tensions increase between the two countries, it is more beneficial to invest that money in creating an easier system, specific to Mexicans, to immigrate; this would encourage more people to come into the U.S the correct way.

However, one of the biggest issue and perhaps only issue is the influence and spread of violent drug cartels from Mexico to the United States. For problems like such, one might think it would be just easier to build a wall that would guarantee complete security for the United States from Mexico’s negative influence. With a wall so strong, no one would be able to get through and the spread of drugs would immediately cease in the U.S. As much as we all want the solution to the spread of violent drug cartels to be as easy as building a wall, there is no guarantee that the spread would stop. In fact, by creating the wall, cartels might be more challenged to get the drugs across the border and there is absolutely no way that drugs would stop circulating in the U.S.

On top of all these “possible” solutions, President Trump’s way of paying for the wall without touching American taxpayer’s money is by having Mexico pay for it. Having Mexico pay for the wall is like asking a friend to pay for your food without sharing the food with them. Without Mexico benefitting from the wall (which they won’t), they will not agree to pay for the wall and ultimately the project will move down the list of priorities for Trump, as he has already mentioned that building the wall is last priority for him currently. With no definite solutions coming from the wall and no one willing to pay for it, it is no longer necessary to keep investing time and energy in it.