Brian Peacock wrote: ↑Fri Dec 28, 2018 1:24 am
Forty Two wrote: ↑Thu Dec 27, 2018 1:37 pm
Brian Peacock wrote: ↑Thu Dec 27, 2018 10:56 am
Cunt wrote: ↑Wed Dec 26, 2018 9:27 pm
I haven't heard any good reasons presented for not having the wall. I mean, other than the obvious fact that 'Orange Man Bad'...
I haven't heard any good arguments for having a wall. Surely such a proposal should proceed upon the basis of the claims made for it?
Do you argue against any of the other 70+ walls around the world, or just the one in the US? Are there no good reasons for having a wall?
The reason for the wall is so that people can't walk into the United States.
In October and November 2018, CBP says 102,000 illegals were apprehended at the border coming into the US. That is a pace for 612,000 for the FY 2019, which is from October 1 to September 30, 2019. The wall would prevent that from happening. That number does not include the number of people who made it through and are here illegally, and we don't know what that number is, but estimates have ranged from 333,000 illegal crossings in a year up to a high about 1.5 million. There are estimates from 12 million to 30 million illegal immigrants living in the US.
I don't like the idea of the wall. But, I can't say I don't see a "problem" with those numbers. If they were Canadian, I'd see the same problem.
I get that argument. I just don't think it's a very good one: an unknown number of outsiders are living here and getting into the country so we need a Southern wall to keep them.... in?
No, to keep future ones out. In the 1980s, Reagan agreed to amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants. And, the promise was that there would be a legislative solution thereafter to deal with illegal immigration so it wouldn't happen again. It happened again. Nothing was done in Congress, except to strip out the strict restrictions on employers that would prevent them from employing illegals, and over time the border enforcement was gutted.
Brian Peacock wrote: ↑Fri Dec 28, 2018 1:24 am
According to
CBP figures 396,579 adults and children were apprehended after entering the country illegally across the Southern border in 2018, with another 124,511 presenting at Southern border posts seeking entry by legal means. 521,090 people is 0.2% of the US working-age population. 1.5 million people is 0.6% of the US working-age population, 12 million is 5% and 30 million is 12% of same. What if we assume that up to 10% of the US working-age population are undocumented - does that tally with your experience? Do really you think 10% of all jobs in the are filled by illegal economic migrants? What would you estimate there net contribution/cost to the economy might be? Are the economic consequences even that important? If not, why not, and what consequence are important?
I'm not basing my argument on the amount of jobs taken by illegal immigrants. All I said was that the supply of labor going up places downward pressure on price of that labor. That's basic. It does. It's not the only economic factor. It's one factor. That being said, I encounter illegals all the time - folks that admit (to me) that they are illegal. And, there is a cottage industry of marriage-for-hire where for $10k or $15k, an American citizen will marry an illegal and fake the marriage through issuance of the green card. I know multiple people who have divorced, and then one of the spouses marries an American. They get the green card, stay fake-married for a while, and then later get fake divorced again. They fake birthday and holiday parties, take picture, have the right kind of mail sent to an address (bills and such - and open a joint account with few dollars in it), and they're clear.
Brian Peacock wrote: ↑Fri Dec 28, 2018 1:24 am
The numbers crossing the border illegally is continuing to follow its long-standing downward trend. The cost of constructing the Southern border wall is estimated to be anywhere from $10 billion to $70 billion, depending who you ask. The costs of running and maintaining the wall are so vague and disparate as to fall into the 'Who the fuck knows?' category. Taking a conservative guesstimate at $25 billion for building the wall: this would mean it cost $48,000 for every person who tried to get into the US last year. However, arguments for the wall are not based on cost effectiveness, on when and how it will start paying for itself, if indeed it ever will -- and not least because Mexico is going to pay for it! -- but on the basis that the Southern border is too porous and needs to be sealed at any cost.
Some sources calculate the net burden of illegal immigrants on the US (federal ,state and local coffers) to be around $115 billion annually.
http://www.fairus.org/issue/publication ... -taxpayers - this has been going on my whole life. and, getting this away from redneck slurs about "day took 'er jerbs!" -- and allegations of racism - the fact remains that all countries have systems of immigration. When I've talked to the European members of this forum about this issue, they seem to think it's perfectly fine to require their immigration laws to be followed, and to deport those who don't follow them. If it was suggested that they needed to add 3.3% to their population every decade of people consisting of people who said "fuck you, I'm crossing you're border and living in your country whether you say it's o.k. or not,' they would, quite naturally, say that they as Brits, or French, or Germans or whatever, have the right to determine which immigrants should be admitted, and that it's not "come one come all, if you can set foot on our soil, you're good!"
It doesn't really matter to me whether you or anyone else thinks that the US is big and rich enough to take in millions of illegal immigrants, without too much trouble. If I lectured you and your countrymen about what immigration level I, an American, thinks is appropriate and acceptable given my assessment of your economy and culture, I suspect you'd tell me just where to stick my opinion.
Brian Peacock wrote: ↑Fri Dec 28, 2018 1:24 am
The Southern border wall will not solve the problems the Trump administration have suggested are caused by its absence. It is nothing but a long-running(!) Republican PR exercise to be paid for by US taxpayers.
So what? What business is it of anyone but Americans?
But, it will solve exactly the problem that the Trump administration has suggested is caused by its absence: The illegal crossing of illegal immigrants over the southern border. Nobody has ever said it is the only necessary action to stop illegal immigration or to correct/reform our immigration system. The US system is antiquated, overly complex, and very lax in enforcement.
There is something to be said for the notion that people who wait patiently, file the appropriate papers, present for inspection properly, etc., are to be preferred over those who say "fuck you, I'm crossing."
Are there any other countries whose border walls you feel strongly about? There are like 70 border walls around the world now. Seems like the only one that makes people compare it to concentration camps and Nazis is the US. We can't have one. The US needs to be wide open. For some reason. Hungary - very reasonable border wall.
Bulgaria built a wall between it and Turkey. Hungary walled off Serbia. Slovenia bought a fence with razors along the top to stop Croatians. Macedonia built a wall along the Greek border, topped with barbed wire. The UK is paying for a border wall 40 feet high along its border with Calais. And, Austria has a wall along the Italian border. I guess they must have been inundated - by your logic - with so many illegals that it was definitely a large percentage of their workforce. Do you think so? This came up in a past thread some time ago, and I was told that the US is different - it's o.k. for Hungary to protect its culture, because it's just a poor little old country and the US is the privileged, rich, 1%-er country (an iteration of the privileged and oppressed argument).
No country admits all economic migrants who can make it to their shores. Why must the US be different?
Also, could you please suggest a country whose immigration system is closes to that which you think the US should emulate?
If the estimate of $15 billion for the wall is accurate, then it represents only 0.3% of what the US 2019 budget will be. Based on your "percentage importance" argument, it would seem that objecting to the wall based on cost is rather silly. The government is investing billions in in the fight for and against the wall, and politicians are wasting massive amounts of time and money opposing it. Just authorize the funds, build the fucker and forget about that little 0.3%. Right? Won't have any detectable impact on anything, right?
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar
