Now, talk about a border wall has been in the news for quite some time. Trump wants it to keep out the illegal immigrants, the Chinese wanted one to keep out the Huns, and I want one because GOD DAMN IT I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO LOOK OVER AT MY NEIGHBOR'S FILTHY LAWN EVERYDAY. ...*le cough* But, in any case, could there be an effective use of a border wall in the U.S.? Well, the short answer is, yes. The primary reason for this is to stop smuggling by organized crime, including people crossing the border who, commit crimes. I should make it clear that I have nothing against illegal immigration and actually think our immigration system is broken (which, while a buzzword, is not something I throw around commonly) as it currently takes longer than your visa will last to become an American citizen. So, you have to become an illegal immigrant, to become a legal immigrant. Something like 40-50% of illegal immigrants just had their visas run out, and most are otherwise normal tax paying citizens. Immigration is a net positive to the economy, and for each person in America, a new job is created. There isn't a fixed job rate, there are jobs created for more people existing. America's population has nearly doubled since the 50's, and the reason the unemployment rate is lower than then is in part because woman have entered the workforce but also because for every new worker, we have a new consumer, as well. People need to buy shoes, shirts, houses, cars, water electricity and so on and for every new consumer, we have a new job. For every new money earner, we have, more things for them to spend money out. Ultimately, it all equals out.
Immigrants also commit about 40-50% of the crime as non-immigrants, being a subset of the population who's generally safer than everyone else. 2.5 times safer, on paper at least. I'm sure there's better sources or statistics for all this, some of you guys in the comment can enlighten everyone else if you feel. Illegal immigrants certainly are a different matter and they do drain the economy a bit and increase crime, but a lot of this could be fixed by making them tax paying citizens. An illegal immigrant making 8,000 a year steals a job from someone who could be making 20,000 a year. If you want an illegal immigrant to pay taxes and not take away jobs, then make them an American citizen! While open borders is a terrible idea, allowing in the mostly normal immigrants will probably be good for us. Anyone who takes the time and effort to come here and live in a new society usually is a good person, and in my opinion has every right to seek a better life.
What I'm talking about however, is organized crime. Specifically, transnational organized crime. Responsible for most of the drugs, guns, and many of the people illegally crossing our border, they're a significant drain not only on the economy, but the well being of most of our citizens. It's no secret that many criminal organizations in the U.S. are directly or indirectly connected to these groups, which have shifted from the Italian mafia to the Mexican Cartels and Russian mafia. These groups are incredibly dangerous, and largely made up of ex-military forces, with nearly half of the members in each group reminiscent of former corrupt regimes around the world. This facilitates not only equipment and resources that were taken when they deserted, but also training, and the military training gives them both exceptional fighting abilities and an innate understanding in to how the law works. It's truly a nightmare scenario, and both groups are ran by ex-special forces, be it the Los Zetas with the GAFE, or the Russian mafia with the KGB. Death-squads for hire, these organizations now have no central authority and that perhaps makes them the most dangerous people in the world.
Hopefully then it won't come as too much of a surprise to learn that roughly 48% of the violent crime in American and roughly the same amount of homicides are directly committed by organized criminal organizations. Their trade of weapons and narcotics increases the crime, with 40% of gangs involved in weapons trafficking and roughly 46.7% of all violent criminals classified as being drug dependent. Despite making up just .5% of the population their make up nearly half of the violence, with their subculture and proclivities towards violence being amplified once they're in a group. There's a saying, never underestimate the power of a bunch of dumb people in large groups and, this holds true for gangs. They tend to hype each other up, and given the music (be it rap, death metal or country), concept of "brotherhood" (be it forged by racism, nationality or lifestyle), drugs (be it cocaine, meth or ecstasy), and general emphasis on violence, it can increase exponentially. The average gang initiate in America is 14, and given the weapons, surrogate family, drugs and money, it isn't very difficult to see why so many kids in low income areas are attracted to these organizations. The CIA themselves couldn't write a better brainwashing manual for cultivating child soldiers. On top of this is at least 10,000 people are illegally trafficked in the U.S. a year, most of them to be sold as sex slaves, but many ending up in Chinese factories, which is a cost perhaps just as bad as murder.
So, what can we do about it? It shouldn't come as a surprise to learn that, much of this comes from the ability to smuggle things and people across the border. Common sense says that if the border was protected these people couldn't even come across, and neither could drugs, guns, or people the other way. Other things like counterfeit medicine or smuggled animals also would go down, although obviously with less of an impact. About 320 out of 870 billion dollars or, 36.9% of their money comes from drugs, which while a sizeable portion is still only a fraction of their funds. Fundamentally, the people crossing the border and committing crimes, ranging from thefts to murders, is their biggest source of revenue stopping them and their goods from crossing is therefore, paramount to stopping the crime. While obviously other factors are prevalent, a sizeable chunk, at least half, is committed by these groups so, if that were shut down that would be a pretty good chunk out of crime.
A border wall obviously has it's issues, but would be a step in the right direction. The wall itself would be helpful, to physically deter people from crossing, as long as it was sufficiently large and long. You would need border guards guarding it, both in towers and in vehicles to be able to apprehend subjects, 40mm grenade launchers to shoot you tear gas, flashbangs and rubber stun grenades for the mostly innocent illegal crossers, underground tunneling detectors, mortar radar, regular radar to detect planes flying over, as well as numerous other detection systems. For good measure, howitzers, anti-tank weapons, some actual tanks, and various other military stuff would be great as an additional defensive options as the border wall could serve a dual purpose of both keeping out criminals, and slowing down a potential invasion by land. While the chance of it is fairly low, it could happen and if it did, would most likely occur by land as our airforce and navy dwarfs the entire world. As in, it's better than all the rest combined. Getting a nuclear missile in to America would be difficult; getting an 18-wheeler with a nuke in it, would not. If an 18-wheeler full of drugs can get across, why not a small tactical nuke? If it is going to happen, it would be by land. Albeit, this isn't nearly as serious a threat. Estimates for the cost and effectiveness can be found here, but I'll dive more in to that later. The cost would range between 18 and 200 billion dollars depending on who you ask, but given the impact it could have, the wall could easily pay for itself during it's 20-50 years lifetime.
Effectiveness and contingencies
Analyzing the effectiveness of a border wall by itself can be difficult, since no border wall has been constructed in the way I propose and as of yet the few that exists are incomplete, only spanning a relatively small part of the border. As much of the information is inconclusive and many of it is intended to work in tandem with the wall, it's rough to say exactly how effective it would be. What I do know is that roughly 30-35% of the time criminals crossing legal Ports of entry or, POE's, are caught, compared to about 1-5% across the land border of the U.S. [Page 26] As the empty border basically just allows anyone to walk across, if these crossing were prevented smugglers would be forced to go through other routes such as by sea, air, or by road, which as there are numerous checkpoints, makes you far more likely to be caught. If at least a third of all the smugglers were caught a year, by the end of 3 years most would be gone, far before they could replenish their numbers. This would diminish their capacity to both smuggle things and increase the price of which they are sold, hurting their businesses exponentially. While smuggling would never truly cease, huge impacts on smuggling could occur and thus, hit organized crime fairly hard. A 35% success rate on catching criminals would be the minimum goal. However, project 28 which didn't involve a wall at all and just sensory equipment such as infrared cameras, drones and other systems allowed for nearly 200-400 crossings to be caught a day or, nearly 100,000 a year, and it covered just 28 miles. While it had a roughly 30% success rate in stopping crossers (most failure simply due to border patrol agents showing up too late) If paired with a wall to actually slow down or even completely stop would be crossers this could in effect dramatically reduce the success rate of would-be smugglers, possibly by nearly 90%. Along largely unmonitored border fencing, border crossings did drop dramatically [1][2], so it's easy to imagine that if both were combined, together, we could have a very low amount of successful crossings along the border. One detects people, and the other slows them down. Any way can be defeated, but if it takes 30 minutes to climb over fences, barbwire, trenches, and set up a ladder, the people most likely will be caught in that time. A border wall combined with vehicles tracking down people, border wall towers with guards monitoring and even shooting at would be crossers (mostly with tear gas and other less-lethal munitions), and a host of other systems could, relatively easily, stop a fairly decent amount of crossings.
So, there are approximately 7,500 miles of border with the U.S., Mexico and Canada, and around 2,000 with Mexico. This includes Alaska, which makes up a sizeable chunk of the border as is (1500 miles), but the Canadian border as a whole makes up some 5,500 miles. Nonetheless, what would it cost to cover the entire border, with a wall? While the estimates vary greatly, particularly based on who builds the walls (the national guard estimated the costs to be 2.8 million dollars per mile, compared to 5.6 million for contractors), my estimates have been between 18 and 200 billion dollars, including labor and goods, or between 2 and 26 million dollars per mile. The project 28 "virtual fence" program costs approximately 1 million dollars a mile, which is a good start for detecting would-be crossers, but not exactly stopping them in their tracks. The Boeing wall [Page 26][2], which was more or less a fence with cameras and a road for cars to travel back and forwarth on (as well as a ditch and some barbwire and car barriers), would cost approximately 2.8 million, so assuming one on each side, that would be about 5.6 million dollars (including the price of labor). With a wall in the middle, an actual wall and not just an amazing fence, would depend heavily on the construction. Assuming a 30 foot high x 9 foot thick concrete wall (sunk about 5 feet in to the ground to keep it from falling over and also for tunneling deterrence), would cost about 10 x 3 x 1760 cubic yards per mile x the price of concrete per cubic yard or between 90-120 dollars. This equates to approximately 4.5 to 6.5 million dollars a mile, with the high estimate being 6.5 million. So, 6.5 million + 5.6 million + 1 million is... only about 13.1 million dollars per mile, or, 100 billion dollars, which really isn't that bad. Granted on top of this you need things like tanks, howitzers, anti-air missiles, short range mortar radar systems and so on, but as I stated before this shouldn't end up being more than 26 million dollars per mile.
Honestly the two biggest obstacles to the wall would be cutting through various areas such as, cities or private property that you couldn't cross through, disrupting migration patterns of various animals, and the price of labor permanently for new border guards. A wall such as this would call for approximately 80,000 permanent border agents, which would have a combined salary of at least 4 billion dollars a year. While much of these, and the equipment could be poached from the national guard and military, as we already have thousands of individuals currently doing very little already on our payrole, and things like older howitzers and MRAP's which are just sitting in storage could be used, brand new equipment would certainly add a pretty penny. Howitzers would be around 500,000 a pop, mrap's the same, and abrams 5 million, so if we wanted mrap's and howitzers every mile that's another million dollars, and abrams tanks every 5 miles is another million on top of that. So that's three million more dollars. Over 20 years though, the combined salaries of these people would be nearly 80 billion dollars which would be almost the price of the wall itself, hence the 200 billion dollar estimate. However, like I said if poached from other organizations that already protect the border, this is likely to be less of an issue. Of additional interest would be expanding legal POE's, such as making the existing roads wider and adding in more border agents to facilitate border crossings through legal entry points and speed things up, which would have a positive impact on commerce and likely offset some of the cost. As for rough terrain that bumped up the cost per mile to nearly 26 million dollars in boeing tests in some places, and cutting cities in half, the short answer is to just to build around this. Any rough terrain we just, build around. We lose a few miles or hundred feet of border here and there but, that's what you get. Also there would be areas for animal crossings, just small enough for animals to get through but not, humans. This has been done successfully for turtles on roads for instance and ducks and so on so, I don't think it would be that hard to implement.
As for trying to fly things over the border, this one is actually easier to deal with. As flying over the border is rather rare and our detection systems can pretty easily pick up on them, it doesn't serve as much of a hassle. Furthermore drones that will patrol the borders to help provide better insight can also be used to intercept the small vehicles people use to try to transport things like drugs across the border, or at least enumerate where they are. Micro radar, designed to pick up mortar and artillery shells, sometimes smaller than a baseball, exist, which would make border wall cannons or small drones difficult things to accomplish. These already detect incoming missiles at hundreds of miles per hour, and that are smaller than 3 inches around. Soldiers are alerted and informed in mere seconds that a round is incoming and told how to run away, which means catching a criminal which usually takes more time is a fairly easy thing to do. It's not very difficult to see their applications in stopping small drones or drug-mortars/catapults, and they already are being used successfully. Other, larger forms of radar could be used to detect incoming aircraft that try to fly below the radar, which would be useful for the defense of the country in any case.
A lot of people talk about how someone could just tunnel under, with some kind of gigantic expensive tunneling machine, and how that could defeat the wall. Now, if you could see the frowny lines on my face, you could probably tell that I was not, in fact, born yesterday (although I was born, on a wednesday. Who knew?) People mention this like it's some kind of insurmountable obstacle, and an impossible task to fight. It's actually quite an easy thing to deal with. Underground tunneling detectors have been around for thousands of years, notably on the Great wall of China by burying drums in the ground and hearing vibrations, in WW1 during trenchwarfare and attempts to tunnel under, and now on virtually all military bases. Modern sophisticated sonar systems allows for sonographic 3-dimensional mappings of the dirt nearly a mile below the ground, and computers can convert this to a 3-D rendering on a computer. This allows you to not only detect tunnelers but examine caves and in incredible detail all the earthen structures below you, which is pretty interesting in it's own right and is currently being used for cave exploration and by archaeologists to find remains, among other things. Nonetheless the point is that a mile out and down you can generally detect any tunnelers with astounding detail, and given the incredible amount of time it takes to tunnel under something like this, would allow you to effectively catch any tunnels under the border wall. To date, there have only been about 150 underground tunnels along the U.S. mexican border, 4 of which have been completed all the way to the other side, all of which were caught rather quickly. It's unlikely given the ease of catching them that, adding a border wall to the mix with additional underground tunneling detectors would somehow make that, easier.
Bremer walls, basically those large concrete barriers by the side of the road but on steroids, and Hesco bations, basically oversized sandbags, can be used rather cheaply to line the walls and provide additional barriers to deter people, Obviously a wall is only as effective as the people guarding it, as all a wall can do is slow or redirect people, but in combination with good efforts by our border patrol and national guard, should stop most illegal crossings. At the same time we should ensure proper treatment of illegal immigrants, but also prevent their illegal crossing so they aren't exploited for labor, unknowingly, when they get here. Perhaps dropping the citizen time to 2 years instead of 7, or making the tests easier seeing as how less native citizens can pass the tests than immigrants. Teach useful things people need to know like stop signs, traffic signals and how to use money, rather than say, what was George washington's borthday. All-in-all, I think a border wall could do some good, and spread out over 20 years, likely wouldn't be that expensive at the federal level in the long run. It's initial costs might be high, but they're far from unaffordable, and even 200 billion dollars would likely pay for itself given how much crime it could potentially reduce.
