I don't want to call it Trump's wall, even though it was a major issue that he used in his campaign, because other presidents have had to tackle the wall issue as well, including GW Bush and Obama.

I've never been a supporter of this wall, and I've always been a little confused at those who are supporters, because it just seems so obvious as to how little overall effectiveness it would have in reducing illegal immigration.

Below is a good (long) article from the Cato Institute on how and why the wall would be ineffective. What I'm curious of though, and why I'm making this thread, are for the folks on here, if there are any, who support finishing the border wall - why? How do you see it being an efficient and effective use of billions of dollars of resources. If you call yourself a fiscal conservative, then this wall should smack you right in the face as being a yuuuge waste of resources.

https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-wall-wont-work

There are tons of links out there against the wall, ^ being the first hit when you google it, but check out others. Some bullet points from the article:

- Can be scaled
- Can be tunnelled
- Can be cut
- Must allow water through
- Tribal land ownership issues where imminent domain won't work
- Water rights issues
- No efficacy studies on how effective the current walled portions have been

I have educated coworkers who still think this is a good idea, and I just don't understand it.

4/25/2018 12:46:21 PM

pssst... because racism

4/25/2018 12:53:51 PM

Arrested Development season 4 did a great job showing just how absurd the concept of the wall is. It is nothing more than a political sham used to divide people and feeds on xenophobia.

4/26/2018 1:30:54 AM

I was hoping to hear from the few folks on here who might support it, and why they want it.

Besides racism.

4/26/2018 9:29:42 AM

This thread reminds me that I've been meaning to start a company that builds walls and lays oil and gas pipe.

Pipe Laying and Erections, inc. sound like a good company name to anyone?

4/26/2018 11:03:52 AM

There’s already fences and shit all over the boarder. I can’t think of a decent reason to build a big wall through the desert.

4/26/2018 12:14:23 PM

That's one of the points of the article, no efficacy studies have been done to see if the already present borders are actually doing any good.

4/26/2018 12:22:21 PM

Land mines would be more effective than a wall probably


[Edited on April 26, 2018 at 1:05 PM. Reason : Y]

4/26/2018 1:04:23 PM

Quote :

"Pipe Laying and Erections, inc. sound like a good company name to anyone?"

To Trump, of course. Perfect name for his company.

4/26/2018 3:01:16 PM

I'm pro boarder security... but yea, I'm not sure the wall is where we want to spend our resources to improve boarder security. The article points to that in the San Diego portion. I don't understand how being against illegal immigration makes me xenophobic.
I'm not really up to speed on current immigration law, or what factors the US takes into account before allowing someone entry or not, so I guess that's really where any discussion on illegal immigration needs to start. But all in all, yea I feel like the wall is really just professional wrestling to create theatre rather than address any real issues.

4/26/2018 4:12:22 PM

Quote :

"boarder"

4/26/2018 8:20:55 PM

I immediately discount any and all arguments made by people who can't spell "border" correctly.

4/26/2018 11:20:10 PM

^^^Other than a minority of hippies calling for unlimited open borders there isn't anyone really against border security. It's just a question of if we have enough already or how to go about making the border safer.

Most people who complain to me about illegal immigration can't describe to me what the legal way actually is. My wife came to this country legally and it took her over a decade to become a full citizen...and that's coming from an allied nation of mostly white-passing people.

4/27/2018 1:51:06 AM

the free market, don't tread on me, "who is john galt" types should all be opposed to border security if they weren't actually just xenophobic morons who don't want to pay taxes

4/27/2018 8:36:49 AM

Quote :

"I immediately discount any and all arguments made by people who can't spell "border" correctly."

Fair enough... I'm a dumbass..

4/27/2018 5:05:29 PM

Quote :

"or what factors the US takes into account before allowing someone entry or not"

I'd guess if you have a valid passport and/or visa, we'll let you in. We just don't expect you to stay indefinitely, which is where most illegal immigration comes from.

4/29/2018 9:59:34 AM

I'm for the wall. I just want people to come here legally. We really need to change the 14th amendment so that you aren't given a citizenship to the USA and access to welfare programs just for being born here. You should have to have at least one parent who is a legal US citizen first. The walls in Europe have helped a small bit with illegals crossing the borders. Our government is going to waste money on stupid stuff no matter what, so we might as well spend it on a wall. There has to be some sort of physical deterrent to at least reduce the number of illegals. Hitler style concentration camps aren't a moral, or ethical way to take care of the problem. Granting amnesty to DACA and all other illegals doesn't solve the problem either. That just sets the standard that roughly every 30 years we will grant mass amnesty to illegals, so keep coming in illegally. Drawing a line on the ground after granting amnesty and saying, "Don't anyone step over that line now okay" doesn't fix it either.

5/21/2018 1:44:16 PM

Have you ever stopped to consider how the majority of illegals get here?

5/21/2018 2:10:07 PM

narrator: he hasn't

5/21/2018 2:13:31 PM

A wall might make drugs more expensive.

5/21/2018 2:18:59 PM

Quote :

"Have you ever stopped to consider how the majority of illegals get here?"

Yes I know people use a passport or visa and then fail to return. There are still plenty attempts to walk across the border though. Like I said, the government will find something stupid to waste money on, so they might as well build a wall.

5/21/2018 4:30:28 PM

take note, Big4Country is no longer allowed to complain about the cost of any social programs

5/21/2018 4:33:25 PM

You could give border patrol more funding for more agents, drones, and surveillance systems and still have plenty left over for useful infrastructure programs for the price that it would take to build and maintain a wall. Saying 'let's build the wall because we gotta spend the money anyways' is dumb

5/21/2018 5:40:25 PM

^^ That's way more generous than I would be.

5/21/2018 5:54:19 PM

Quote :

"take note, Big4Country is no longer allowed to complain about the cost of any social programs"

No the government needs to make cuts to social programs and pretty much everything. I'm pretty sure you could find wasteful spending in every department of government, if you search long enough.

5/21/2018 8:21:56 PM

B4C: government needs to cut spending on everything except wall building

5/21/2018 9:05:02 PM

^^ Like I said, the government will find something stupid to waste money on, so they might as well build functional social programs

Quote :

" I'm pretty sure you could find wasteful spending in every department of government, if you search long enough. "

like, for example... A WALL?

[Edited on May 22, 2018 at 8:07 AM. Reason : fucking moron]

5/22/2018 8:06:55 AM

Quote :

"Like I said, the government will find something stupid to waste money on, so they might as well build a wall."

It totally doesn't surprise me that this is B4C's logic for supporting the building of a wall (and his xenophobia, of course)

5/22/2018 2:32:37 PM

BTTT

When Trump came down the escalator we had about 40,000 deaths per year from overdoses. Today we have 100,000 a year. In my class of 250 seniors that graduated, about 5 I know for certain have died of overdoses.

I too thought the wall was dumb for the above mentioned cases, but it was prior to understanding how politics work.

Quote :

"And when they were done criticizing Trump for the “error” of saying he would build one big solid “wall,” the critics had convinced themselves that border security was a higher priority than they had thought coming into the conversation. The ideas that you think about the most are the ones that automatically and irrationally rise in your mental list of priorities. And Trump made us think about the wall a lot. He did that because he knew voters would see him as the strongest voice on the topic. It also sucked up media energy that might have focused on political topics he didn’t understand at the same depth as his competitors. Consider how much discipline it took for him to avoid continually clarifying that his “wall” was really a patchwork of solutions that depend on the terrain. In order to pull off this type of weapons-grade persuasion, he had to be willing to endure brutal criticism about how dumb he was to think he could secure the border with a solid wall. To make those criticisms go away, all Trump needed to do was clarify that the “wall” was actually a variety of different border solutions, depending on cost and terrain, every time he mentioned it. Easy as pie. He wanted them to make border control the biggest issue in the campaign just by talking nonstop about how Trump’s “wall” was impractical. As long as people were talking about the wall, Trump was the most important person in the conversation. He moves energy and attention to where it helps him "

2/7/2025 6:50:40 AM

Bless your heart

2/7/2025 8:32:08 PM

He has an inside track on how the minds of ignorant people work.

2/7/2025 8:50:31 PM

^ ignorant people need simple images to sell ideas. Ignorant people are the majority of the population. Assuming you mean unable to process information and not just "lacks knowledge."

1) Trump got more people talking about immigration than what he likely did not know about foreign policy at the time.
2) His simple imagery of wall resonated with simple people
3) A lot of people have since died of fentanyl. Border security could have maybe saved a few.

Which are ignorant?

2/8/2025 9:05:47 AM

Bless. Your. Heart.

2/8/2025 10:27:10 AM

^^What is the point you are trying to make?

Fentanyl is a problem insomuch as it also strains public resources, but how many people are dying of fentanyl while not knowingly taking some form of illicit drug?

I'm not terribly concerned that anyone I am close to is going to die from Fentanyl because they're not drug users. I fully understand that anyone can use drugs and it's often non-obvious to those around them, but if they do choose to use drugs and pay the consequences, that will certainly be an unfortunate and regrettable personal choice that they made. Building a physical wall of any kind for the primary purpose of protecting people from voluntarily using illicit drugs that might kill them doesn't seem like a particularly strong motivator to me.

I have greater empathy for people suffering in circumstances not primarily of their own making.

2/8/2025 11:52:56 AM

My main point is Trump made immigration an issue a decade ago. That was the crux of him being called a racist and the media painting everything with race issues. Since then we have had a massive increase in negative effects that are border adjacent. I'd count the fentanyl deaths, maybe you don't, but also the extra 3-5 million people that are here in the Biden years from overturning Trumps Exec orders and gaslighting the public that nothing unusual was happening. The physical wall is a proxy for "immigration". The wall concept is to sell it to people who can't use a multifunction remote on their TV, but more broadly its for immigration policy to stop human trafficking and fentanyl deaths.

If one drug has 1 in 1,000,000 risk of overdose and a new drug increases the risk to 1 in 10,000 you could broadly make the case they were unaware of the risk and the risk wasn't their own doing. Maybe you can make the argument that today in 2025 everyone knows that if you fuck with drugs you run the risk of fentanyl poisoning, but that certainly wouldn't have been the case a few years ago.

2/8/2025 3:42:15 PM

You're totally right. Literally no one had been talking about immigration. Ever. Completely not discussed for decades. Certainly not since the 1980s.

And fentanyl issues definitely aren't a result of the total failure of US drug policies and refusal to regulate a company that knowingly pushed a massively addictive opioid while lying about its effects. Nope, it's just those evil brown people. Better build a pointless wall that doesn't even address any of that.

You're a fucking joke

[Edited on February 8, 2025 at 6:23 PM. Reason : ]

2/8/2025 6:19:55 PM

Again I didn't say just a wall. The wall is the elevator pitch to immigration as a whole. I'm not arguing the wall would solve the issue, more than painting the issue as racist and letting millions of people in certainly didn't fucking help.

Taking it seriously and not calling everyone racist for 10 years could have saved at least one life. Flatten the curve if you will.

I guess I'd have that negative reaction if I'd been overblown about racism while my generation gets head shots from shit smuggled over the border. My mom died as did several people I know cunt.

[Edited on February 8, 2025 at 6:34 PM. Reason : A]

2/8/2025 6:30:59 PM

It literally didn't matter one way or another. That's the point. And it's why you're against fucking joke.

2/8/2025 6:32:45 PM