In private businesses, they require any investment to "pay back". so why not our government? That is the idea behind this blog.
No one seems to be working on collecting the numbers for the cost of illegal immigration and our screwed up legal immigration. It is my position that the USA loses on both groups, but it is worse on the illegal immigrants. Arresting them after they cross our border is not the solution, because that is just where the cost start to accumulate and it is a big number. Figure that they are kept in jail for at least 30 days and then let out to await our legal process. It has to cost us at least $1,000 a week to keep them in jail. That totals about $4,000. Then they are on some kind of welfare for a year at a cost of at least $250 per week for a total of $13,000 for the year. We all know that any legal process is expensive, so I estimate that this alone amounts to at least $10,000. I get a total of at least $27,000 per individual illegal immigrant who we catch and deport, it may actually be higher.
Next, let's look at the wall and ask this question. "How many illegal immigrants do we have to prevent ever entering the USA to pay back the wall in 10 years?" Given my numbers above, we could spend up to $270,000 on a wall to prevent one illegal immigrant from crossing our border each year. Think about this. The wall is a one time expenditure that keeps illegal immigrants out forever rather than a guard or technology system at the border that you have to pay year after year.
We keep hearing from liberals that the wall is a bad idea and that we should get with the times and use technology. Technology does not keep illegal immigrants out, all it does is to help arrest those who easily cross our borders and once they cross we have all the costs that I pointed out above. If El Salvador wanted to bankrupt the USA, all they would have to do is to have a bunch of their people line up on the border and walk across when our guards were not looking. Our costly legal system would kick in and lawyers would end up with all of our tax money and we would still have illegal immigrants in our country.
Catching, arresting and deporting illegal immigrants is "not" the solution. The only solution is to prevent them entering in the first place and that is what a wall can do. As I have blogged before, we have to make getting into the USA illegally more painful than staying back in El Salvador. We need to start thinking in terms of real pain, not like Dr Spock with his "time outs"!
No one seems to be working on collecting the numbers for the cost of illegal immigration and our screwed up legal immigration. It is my position that the USA loses on both groups, but it is worse on the illegal immigrants. Arresting them after they cross our border is not the solution, because that is just where the cost start to accumulate and it is a big number. Figure that they are kept in jail for at least 30 days and then let out to await our legal process. It has to cost us at least $1,000 a week to keep them in jail. That totals about $4,000. Then they are on some kind of welfare for a year at a cost of at least $250 per week for a total of $13,000 for the year. We all know that any legal process is expensive, so I estimate that this alone amounts to at least $10,000. I get a total of at least $27,000 per individual illegal immigrant who we catch and deport, it may actually be higher.
Next, let's look at the wall and ask this question. "How many illegal immigrants do we have to prevent ever entering the USA to pay back the wall in 10 years?" Given my numbers above, we could spend up to $270,000 on a wall to prevent one illegal immigrant from crossing our border each year. Think about this. The wall is a one time expenditure that keeps illegal immigrants out forever rather than a guard or technology system at the border that you have to pay year after year.
We keep hearing from liberals that the wall is a bad idea and that we should get with the times and use technology. Technology does not keep illegal immigrants out, all it does is to help arrest those who easily cross our borders and once they cross we have all the costs that I pointed out above. If El Salvador wanted to bankrupt the USA, all they would have to do is to have a bunch of their people line up on the border and walk across when our guards were not looking. Our costly legal system would kick in and lawyers would end up with all of our tax money and we would still have illegal immigrants in our country.
Catching, arresting and deporting illegal immigrants is "not" the solution. The only solution is to prevent them entering in the first place and that is what a wall can do. As I have blogged before, we have to make getting into the USA illegally more painful than staying back in El Salvador. We need to start thinking in terms of real pain, not like Dr Spock with his "time outs"!
