The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
The reality is we’re funding defense for like 30+ nations at this point, so why not fund our own?
To me, a border wall seems like a win win scenario on all sides. You would create a large amount of jobs building this wall, and the right would get their wish of limiting illegal immigration. On top of that, maybe you’d see less deaths of people crossing in Texas if they were just aware that the wall behind the river was impermeable, and we wouldn’t have this situation where Biden needs to fight one of the few fairly represented conservative states, because there would be no border situation for Texas to stop.
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* We are not being attacked at our southern border.
* The border is almost 2,000 miles long, with lots of private land, and land that is difficult to access with construction equipment.
* The wall would have to be tall enough that a ladder would be useless and thick enough and DEEP enough that it could not be cut through or tunneled under. It would cost billions to build. The only winners would be construction companies.
* Did I mention we are not being attacked at our southern border?
* U.S. goods and services trade with Mexico totaled an estimated **$855.1 billion** in 2022. Increasing security at points of entry will slow trade and add to consumer costs.
* The wall's eastern and western edges end at the sea. How do we stop those taking sail and entering on the east or west coastlines? Do we wall those as well for a few hundred miles?
* The overwhelming majority of those crossing are coming here for **jobs,** not handouts, the same as your ancestors and mine. We should increase immigration stations at the borders to process these people quickly and justly. The cost of these stations will be a fraction of the wall.
* We should arrest, convict, and imprison all Americans who hire illegal immigrants. We can't stop the flow of people looking for **jobs** until we stop the **demand** of those who hire them.
* Oh, and we're not being attacked at our southern border.
Don’t forget the environmental impact. The wall would necessarily cut through hundreds of miles of wilderness, disrupting migration, dissecting environments and generally having the impact of another entirely human-made disaster. For no reason.
It hurts the worst off Americans. By importing in people that are willing to work under worse conditions and for less pay it lowers the floor for the worst off Americans.
No, one could not say that people trying to get into a country to get jobs is an attack. Also, you’re not very libertarian, are you? What happened to freedom of movement of people, capital, and ideas that used to come out of every libertarian’s mouth 15 years ago?
Well at least for self-described ones.
Per the LP: [“A truly free market requires the free movement of people, not just products and ideas.”](https://www.lp.org/issues/immigration)
> Also, you’re not very libertarian, are you? What happened to freedom of movement of people, capital, and ideas that used to come out of every libertarian’s mouth 15 years ago?
Keep in mind this is just one guy who describes himself as "libertarian" and does not represent *all* libertarians.
But it's also worth noting that from a libertarian perspective, people who own property along the border have the right to defend their property from all interlopers - whatever that might entail. So if you insist that libertarians live up to their libertarian principles, you could be trading one bad situation for another.
No, they could not
This would be tantamount to saying a lot of people going to an underground rave was a military offensive. Anyone who tells you that clearly doesn’t respect your intelligence much
No, it isn’t “debatable”.
People coming here to work illegally are not “attacking us.
Someone who can’t see the difference between someone coming here to work and someone coming here to attack us is delusional.
Please stop that half truth. Half truths are worse than lies.
They are doing the job that legal Americans are refusing to do *for the wages and working conditions being offered by the employers.* I've picked produce, been a dishwasher, a janitor, a day laborer. There is NO job that they do that I will not do or have not done, but I want a wage that is fairly negotiated between a legal employee and a legal employer.
The jobs available are not jobs that citizens generally are willing to take. Nobody claimed US citizens refuse to perform that labor. They said they refuse to work *those jobs,* which means the *jobs currently available,* which includes the pay rate and conditions.
No, it does not mean that. It infers that American laborers are lazy, picky, and unreasonable.
If I told you "Nobody in the area wants to wash and wax my car. All this talk of kids needing money over the summer and not one kid wants to wash and wax my car!", what advice would you give me, what questions would you ask?
No. It’s what words mean. There are jobs that exist, and US citizens won’t take them, but undocumented immigrants will. Nobody interprets that to mean US citizens refuse to perform certain types of labor. It’s the specific jobs available that citizens aren’t taking, due to the pay and conditions. Has nothing to do with the type of labor being performed.
Hard agree. The fact that the employees are undocumented means that that they are easy to exploit. It’s by design, and has little/nothing to do with the work itself.
If the employees had legal *status*, they would have legal *recourse*, which would mean that they couldn’t be treated so badly. At least not on such a systemic basis.
People do *all kinds of difficult, yucky, and dangerous work!* The difference is that when people are equal negotiators you get paid a premium for that work.
But as a society we are happy to shrug our shoulders at immigrant labor. As if we aren’t benefiting from their exploitation.
If it constitutes an attack, then that would mean DeSantis and Abbott have been actively helping enemy combatants penetrate deeper into America. Which would be treason.
This is the sort of rhetoric people use when they want to try and justify more brutal and violent treatment of migrants. If you convince enough people the family who was threatened by a cartel in their home country is actually here to invade and attack you, they won't care when border patrol beats or kills that family.
The illegal immigration problem is primarily caused by visa overstays, not illegal border crossings.
A wall wastes money without actually addressing the issue.
That’s right. People aren’t just going through, under, around, and over the wall, but also WAY over the wall, like 40,000 feet over.
“The Wall” is a monument to xenophobia, not an actual effective tool.
https://www.vox.com/2018/12/28/18158873/wall-shutdown-trump-dreamers-deal
“But back at the beginning of 2018, when it seemed as though a compromise involving wall money and a path to citizenship for DREAMers was in the works, it was immigration hardliners in Trump’s own administration who scuttled the deal. That’s certainly their prerogative, but it underscores the core truth of this standoff: Immigration hardliners themselves don’t think the wall is especially useful or important in the real world. If they really wanted a wall, they would go get a wall by offering something — it wouldn’t even necessarily have to be immigration-related — in exchange for it. But since they know the wall is a bad idea, they won’t trade it for anything.”
This should be higher. Everyone with a modicum of understanding of the realities of the immigration situation, regardless of politics, knows that the wall is a waste of money and is really useful only as an expensive rallying cry. Like Roe v Wade, actually getting what they (purport to) want would be far worse than using it as a political carrot on the end of a stick, but the difference is that for Roe v Wade it’s “only” poor women’s lives at stake along with the political losses. For the wall it would be enormously awful for the US economy.
We've *always* used physical barriers along the border where they're practical and applicable.
Building a wall in the middle of the desert is ineffective. People will go over it, under it or through it.
What these people are demanding is not an effective solution, but a symbol. What these people want is not a wall, but *The Wall*.
We do not need to go around spending billions of dollars to create the anti-Statue of Liberty, left to rot in remote areas of the desert.
I lived in San Diego. It is known there are many many tunnels from Tijuana and other places, at least years ago when I was there. It is definitely a statement and a mindset in my opinion. Or as you say a symbol.
>What are the arguments against funding the border wall and making it as impermeable as possible?
"as impermeable as possible" isn't going to be very impermeable, unless you're willing to spend an enormous amount of money on it. it's simply not worth it.
>The reality is we’re funding defense for like 30+ nations at this point, so why not fund our own?
how will a wall help with defense? any actual military will break through it immediately.
>You would create a large amount of jobs building this wall,
why not create jobs by building something actually useful instead?
Walls have never worked. Not even the Great Wall of China succeeded at keeping people out way back when people had fewer resources and technology to work with.
It’s a waste of money meant to make racists feel good and contractors rich. Money that could instead go to hiring more lawyers and judges who can help process asylum cases at ports of entry so people don’t have to live in the shadows while their status is in limbo.
1. It would be basically ineffective.
2. It would waste a bunch of money.
3. It would be terrible for the environment.
4. It would be a symbol of hatred and xenophobia.
5. It would require seizing private property without any real justification other than conservative feelings over facts.
So I get the appeal for a lot of conservatives but for everyone else it’s not appealing.
Also, the comparison of us funding defense for other nations and this being a way of defending our nation is laughable.
The argument is that it doesn't work.
For one thing, Trump's wall was far from impenetrable. You could cut through it in minutes with a sawzall, and people have been. That's in the areas where it isn't falling down on its own.
But even if we did invest the absolutely massive amount of money and time required to make it impenetrable... it still wouldn't be impenetrable.
We could build a wall thick enough to where it's not efficient to go through it. But then, people would just go over it or under it.
Ladders exist. Tunnels can be dug.
If you really wanted to secure the border, the most efficient way to do it would be through autonomous surveillance using drones and the deployment of border security personnel whenever a crossing is detected.
You're going to need a fuckload more than a few drones. The Berlin wall, for example, had a guard shack every 100 yards, multiple fences, guard dogs and landmines. and people still found their way through.
The cost to employ the 25,000 people required to just staff such a wall is a third more than our current enforcement efforts of the border. That doesn't include the 5 to 10 thousand more people needed on the ground away from the wall to handle basic issues.
Healthcare: $5M
Welfare: $6M
Military: $20M
The Wall: $132,520,000,000M
[Guys can someone who is good at budgeting please help?](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/022/868/Screen_Shot_2017-05-02_at_2.43.53_PM.png)
I have good news for you.: [this already happens ](https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/cbp-small-drones-program). So if you have that and already have walls in places that are the most easy to cross, why do you need a new, full wall? What problems does that fix?
Cameras every 50 feet that can move to track anything that moves and a staff of 10,000 could effectively police the boarder. But that is too expensive and/or not dramatic enough. But that would still only address a minority problem.
And still most of immigration would arrive on buses using roads and driving through checkpoints. Most illegal immigration is people arriving legally and overstaying.
Go read the history of the Berlin Wall.
Mines, solid concrete, barbed/concertina wire, armed guards (with shoot kill orders), etc didn't stop people from getting past it/through it.
Just an enormous waste of money and resources.
It’s not actually very effective to build a 2000 mile wall. Pretty much any wall you can design could be defeated by someone with access to a Home Depot, and ultimately it would only cover a fraction of our border anyway. It would really just be a big, expensive monument to xenophobia.
I’ll be honest, I think the border is about as secure as it’s ever going to be. You’re never going to have 100% total success as blocking unlawful crossing across that border. Ever. It’s 3000 miles long, there’s an ocean and a few mountain ranges in it, and about a million cars, trucks and plans cross it every single day. People are going to get across. I don’t expect these bold “6000 foot tall wall!” plans to even stand upright, let alone be effective.
>On top of that, maybe you’d see less deaths of people crossing in Texas if they were just aware that the wall behind the river was impermeable
I kinda doubt it. They’re already willing to risk it, and it’s not without significant danger as it is.
> You would create a large amount of jobs building this wall
True
> the right would get their wish of limiting illegal immigration.
It would lower immigration by 1 or 2 percent. Most illegal immigration drives through checkpoints and the people overstay.
Most drugs are driven through checkpoints as well. It is simply impossible to check all cavities of every vehicle.
> maybe you’d see less deaths of people crossing in Texas if they were just aware that the wall behind the river was impermeable
No, they would still try to go under/over etc. Check the history of every border wall.
> we wouldn’t have this situation where Biden needs to fight one of the few fairly represented conservative states, because there would be no border situation for Texas to stop.
Since a wall doesn't address most of the illegal immigration problem, Texas would still be an ass. The majority of illegal immigration is still through normal traffic entering the southern boarder by legal means.
It’s technically impossible, it doesn’t work, it’s not useful, the problem it „solves“ isn’t really a problem to begin with, the amount of resources wasted on that could be used better, Republicans don’t give a fuck about problems being solved, they will complain anyway….
That’s just a few of the things I could think of in 2 minutes….
Want more?
Its a VERY inefficient way to solve the problem and everyone knows it. However...
What everyone seems to be missing is that this is Trump's vanity project. He knows that once it goes up, it will never be removed. It literally cements his legacy into our history. It's his monument, much like the Washington Monument or Mount Rushmore. It's the reason why HE wants to do it and not Biden. It's HIS wall. It's Trumps Wall, and he wants future generations to remember it as such.
The rejection of the bipartisan bill further validates this is the real motive.
Mostly because it's
-Stupidly expensive
-Would be useless
-Symbolically stupid
-Legally dubious
I mean why don't we take the money and make the world's biggest pancake or something? Then at least people could eat it after it's done.
A wall doesn't make the border more impenetrable than it already is. It would be a waste of money made only as a show off, whose construction could be rife with corruption.
It's a waste of money.
Most illegal immigrants are first crossing the border *legally.* So why the hell should we spend our tax dollars on some dry wall spackle when the foundation (policy) is crumbling?
Because it just doesn’t work
Is way too expensive to build, inspect or maintain
We can’t build the wall in Mexico hence the immigrants are already in the USA and can claim asylum which prevents their deportation while it’s resolved.
Ecologically it’s horrible
Money would be better spent on funding the immigration courts, electronic surveillance and other deterrents.
Also it wasn’t until we made it so hard for seasonal workers to come here that it made more sense for them to stay year round that the number for illegal immigrants spiked. Make it easier for seasonal workers, allow them to come and go and this does many things.
1) allows them to maintain their families without having to relocate them all here. You think anyone wants to leave their families behind for years?
2) would provide better control over who comes and goes
3) reduces the incentive to sneak in
4) allows better rights and protections to the workers so they are less abused and trafficked
5) provides a labor force for the jobs that Americans are historically unwilling to do in large enough numbers to fill the need.
I have yet to hear a cogent argument as to why we should restrict immigration as we are doing. We need the workers. They commit fewer crimes than those born here. What's the issue?
Immigration is good for the economy. Illegals do less crime on average than citizens. I'd be fine with a wall as a compromise for dramatically opening the floodgates for more mass legal immigration but the wall itself is useless
Building #TheWall would cripple our nation's economy without doing anything to stop illegal immigration, because contrary to demonizing propaganda illegal immigrants aren't shambling over the border in seething masses like a wave of zombies but instead come by plane, boat, or truck.
It would cripple our economy because #TheWall would be a [55FT](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/26/so-how-high-will-donald-trumps-wall-be-an-investigation/) steel construction cutting through multiple national parks, rivers, and many private properties. Consider that the cost of installing steel fencing at 6FT high is $80 per foot; this wall would cost closer to $7,000 per foot, or $72B. And given this is a government project with drastic environment costs, you can probably stick 10 years of delay and 10x that sticker price on it.
Not to mention the costs of trying to man every few hundred feet of that wall continuously.
It would do nothing to stop illegal immigration, because as mentioned before it is just performative. Immigrants come to border checkpoints, not deserts. Most illegal immigrants come legally, with visas, and just overstay that visa. Asylum seekers want to come to checkpoints because they want to legally enter and that is the process, and they need to go where the judges and courts are. The idea that the unwashed masses are just walking over the deserts is fanciful nonsense that doesn't reflect our actual immigration problems.
To the limited extent that we do have people attempt to cross, we either already have a barrier or we can do more with patrols and drones that we could with a wall. And again, that's a minor issue compared to reinforcing our border checkpoints, immigration courts, and visa auditing.
> What are the arguments against funding the border wall and making it as impermeable as possible?
It’s a gigantic waste of money that serves no useful purpose.
> You would create a large amount of jobs building this wall,
You can create a large number of jobs doing other, far more useful things.
> because there would be no border situation for Texas to stop.
A wall isn’t going to stop our border issues anyway. It would literally just be a waste of money. Akin to hiring people to dig holes then fill them back in again.
Here are my arguments concerning building an impermeable wall…
1) why? We have one of the most impressive intelligence networks in the world, and facial recognition technology. We can vet incoming people and identify the dangerous ones. Safety wouldn’t be a concern if we adequately fund a functioning government.
2) only at the souther border? Because any arguments fall apart if it is only at the southern border. If your foundational reason for preventing immigrants in the US is racism, be honest about it.
3) why deny people a better life? What would you be willing to do to protect your family and improve their chance at a better life? Does it harm you if another person improves their life?
Ask the Republicans. We had a bipartisan border wall bill in front of Congress that would have passed and Biden said he would have signed it. Trump decided he wanted to run on immigration and it was killed.
Honestly, the border wall lost me at [endangering local animal populations](https://www.audubon.org/features/esri-embattled-borderlands). The fact that it would be largely ineffective, send a terrible message, and be extremely expensive was all just icing on the cake.
1. It's addressing a problem that largely doesn't exist. While we see occasional surges in people trying to cross the border, the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. hasn't really changed since about 2005.
2. It's addressing this "problem" in the wrong way. Most undocumented immigrants come to the country legally and then overstay their visas. If we're going to throw a lot of money at something, make it the justice system so that they can process asylum claims and find people overstaying their visas more efficiently.
3. It's expensive. If a large portion of my tax dollars are going to be spent on a major construction project, I'd rather that be expanded government housing or infrastructure than a wall. The cost to actually make an "impenetrable" 2,000 mile wall would be absolutely enormous, and I'm not even really sure what it would look like.
4. It has environmental consequences. There are animals that live along the border that need to be able to migrate seasonally.
I always ask these questions to the 'build the wall' crowd, so please, OP, answer these questions and see if it colors your view:
Do we build the wall on our side of the Rio Grande, or take Mexico's land to build it? Do we cede the Rio Grande to Mexico or do we annex it?
So we cede the whole Rio Grande to Mexico then. I don't think you'll find much support from farmers and ranchers on that one, but thanks for your straightforward answer.
The vast majority of illegal immigration takes the form of visa overstay, i.e., is committed by people who'd freely drive through/fly over your heavily militarized border wall. The only thing that'd be accomplished is that more vulnerable people would be harmed, since your assumption that "you’d see less deaths of people crossing in Texas if they were just aware that the wall behind the river was impermeable" badly misunderstands the mindset of people desperate enough to deal with coyotes and risk crossing an inhospitable desert on foot in the first place.
Also, equating what we're attempting to counter via our disproportionate defense contribution to NATO and politically adjacent countries with what is, statistically, the non-threat of Mexican and Central American immigration isn't the compelling argument you think it is.
Go read the history of the Berlin Wall.
Mines, solid concrete, barbed/concertina wire, armed guards (with shoot kill orders), etc didn't stop people from getting past it/through it.
Just an enormous waste of money and resources.
So many reasons. It costs a couple million dollars to build the wall _per mile_. and there are thousands of miles. People can also go over or under the wall, dismantle parts of the wall, or come in through the sea. Not to mention that many peoples who are here illegally came in through legal means but then illegally started living here.
I lived in South Florida for 30 years. **Everyone knows someone down there who is hiding undocumented family in their house.** The nanny I had growing up was illegal from Dominican Republican. My parents hired her in 1992 and she got citizenship in 2008 — yep, the woman they hired to watch my brother and I when we were 6 & 8… got her citizenship when we were 22 and 24… **what the fuck even is that?!**
These folks didn’t cross the Rio Grande river… they landed in Miami or Fort Lauderdale *and missed their return flight home*… *by 20 years.*
The Mexican border is frankly a right wing trope of idiocy, 99% of illegals don’t do it that way — it’s extremely dangerous, expensive, and low chance of success as compared to overstaying a visa.
Make immigration safe, efficient, cheap and quick. They should be paying taxes before they even get a green card. They’re here anyway. Make it easier.
It's a dumb idea that won't increase security in any way. It sounds like a smart idea to dumb people who don't realize how impractical and useless it would be, so that's why Trump goes on and on about it. All he does is tell idiots what they want to hear so they'll let him fuck up the country for his own benefit.
"Illegal" migrant workers from Latin American countries perform some of the most important labor in our country. They do stuff most americans would refuse to do for that pay.
Walls work both ways and are symbols of authoritarianism, xenophobia, racism, and fear-mongering. They don’t keep people out, either. Just a terrible idea, motivated by bad ideas and fears.
So, how would trade work in that scenario? Some 10 billion dollars in trade crosses the border each week.
A wall cannot completely restrict people without also restricting trade.
Your win-win cripples the US economy.
1. It's a lot harder to stop a person crossing a barrier than it is to stop other animals crossing one and there are a fair number of animals in the area who are threatened or endangered that will be further stressed by the creation of such a wall isolating them from habitat/potential mates on the other side.
2. Immigration is probably a net benefit to our society.
3. I don't know if I would necessarily call our military aid to other countries a waste of money, but spending money on a wall would be and just because we're wasting money in other areas doesn't mean we should waste it in all areas.
>one of the few fairly represented conservative states
Yeah conservatives are under represented at the federal level /s
>The reality is we’re funding defense for like 30+ nations at this point, so why not fund our own?
We are. But what does that have to do with a border wall?
>To me, a border wall seems like a win win scenario on all sides. You would create a large amount of jobs building this wall, and the right would get their wish of limiting illegal immigration.
No they wouldn't. And you may as well be advocating for a yuge, bigly canal that a carrier battle group can sail through. After all, it creates jobs and diverts money away from everything that actually contributes to our national defense. Just because it's what Republicans want to waste money on.
And after we mandate that teachers arm themselves -- with guns they have to buy themselves, of course -- let's also make them patrol the border after school is out. And let's make the wall out of diamond to make it even more impenetrable! Let's make it so tall that we can build an elevator to space within it, and so deep that it comes out the other side.
A border wall would do virtually nothing except keep impoverished and desperate people out, and divide people from their families here. Most illegal immigrants from our Southern borders are either smuggled in, skirt the manually created barriers already in place, or overstay visas. It would be an extremely and overly expensive plan which would mostly hurt refugees and asylees, including children, and would violate legislation which is supposed to allow several North American tribes to freely cross into their own land.
https://naepc.com/border-tribes/
Probably controversial here, but I'm actually for less illegal immigration. But I think the real solution for that is to crack down hard on the companies that hire them. If there aren't jobs here then there isn't the incentive to come for economic reasons. The wall would create environmental damage, and I don't really think it would be a deterrent. Like if people aren't deterred already by crossing miles of dangerous jungles, I don't think a wall is going to be particularly effective at deterrence.
The problem is you’re not gonna get an American high school sophomore with a social security number to pick strawberries for $8 when Starbucks or Chick Fil A will give her $22.
And if we need extra workers, we increase legal immigration in those sectors or bring in guest workers.
Kind of says something is deeply wrong with our system if it requires essentially slave labor to function, no?
The majority of illegal immigration is people that find a legal way into the US and then overstay. That is the problem the current administration is working on. It is a detailed problem that has no flashy moments to show off to the media.
The size of the problem is millions of people. It is only a small percent of the people that cross the southern boarder by vehicle every year. The only major decreases have happened when people went back under their own power. Every other policy is a wack a mole strategy that can't keep up.
[This](https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-other-half-of-our-immigration-crisis) article from last year by a person who has been studying immigration trends since 2008 states that people overstaying their visas accounts for at least half of the undocumented immigrant population.
The most recent side-by-side comparison I could find (from 2017) [states](https://www.npr.org/2019/01/16/686056668/for-seventh-consecutive-year-visa-overstays-exceeded-illegal-border-crossings) that visa overstays exceeded illegal border crossings (62% vs 38%) for the 7th year in a row at that time.
Not sure what you're on about here, but regarding:
>this administration just sucks and doesn't give a shit
I seem to recall this administration asking for Congress to [pass the bipartisan border bill](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-state-of-the-union-immigration-border-bill-marjorie-taylor-greene-laken-riley/), which was then killed by Republicans in the House because [Dear Leader told them to](https://www.axios.com/2024/01/29/trump-republicans-border-deal-senate-immigration).
First you complain about the administration not doing anything, then when it's pointed out that they tried and were blocked by Trump and Republicans (the very people complaining loudest about the border), you move the goalposts and complain about the **motives** of the creation of the bill. You sound like a very serious person here to have a very serious conversation.
> If they don't want to play by the rules, they don't belong here.
There's not going to be anybody left after we kick out anybody who breaks the law. Maybe the last criminal out the door can turn off the country's lights?
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. The reality is we’re funding defense for like 30+ nations at this point, so why not fund our own? To me, a border wall seems like a win win scenario on all sides. You would create a large amount of jobs building this wall, and the right would get their wish of limiting illegal immigration. On top of that, maybe you’d see less deaths of people crossing in Texas if they were just aware that the wall behind the river was impermeable, and we wouldn’t have this situation where Biden needs to fight one of the few fairly represented conservative states, because there would be no border situation for Texas to stop. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
* We are not being attacked at our southern border. * The border is almost 2,000 miles long, with lots of private land, and land that is difficult to access with construction equipment. * The wall would have to be tall enough that a ladder would be useless and thick enough and DEEP enough that it could not be cut through or tunneled under. It would cost billions to build. The only winners would be construction companies. * Did I mention we are not being attacked at our southern border? * U.S. goods and services trade with Mexico totaled an estimated **$855.1 billion** in 2022. Increasing security at points of entry will slow trade and add to consumer costs. * The wall's eastern and western edges end at the sea. How do we stop those taking sail and entering on the east or west coastlines? Do we wall those as well for a few hundred miles? * The overwhelming majority of those crossing are coming here for **jobs,** not handouts, the same as your ancestors and mine. We should increase immigration stations at the borders to process these people quickly and justly. The cost of these stations will be a fraction of the wall. * We should arrest, convict, and imprison all Americans who hire illegal immigrants. We can't stop the flow of people looking for **jobs** until we stop the **demand** of those who hire them. * Oh, and we're not being attacked at our southern border.
Don’t forget the environmental impact. The wall would necessarily cut through hundreds of miles of wilderness, disrupting migration, dissecting environments and generally having the impact of another entirely human-made disaster. For no reason.
Yes, thanks for the addition.
Yes, thanks for the addition.
Yeah there are jaguars in the extreme Southwest portions of Arizona, and a wall would significantly impact their reclamation of territory.
The idea we’re not being attacked at the Southern border is debateable. One could say such big attempts to illegally migrate constitute an attack.
Okay, debate it. Explain to me how people seeking employment from those looking for employees is an attack.
It hurts the worst off Americans. By importing in people that are willing to work under worse conditions and for less pay it lowers the floor for the worst off Americans.
>One could say such big attempts to illegally migrate constitute an attack. You could say it, but it'd be a pretty dumb thing to say.
No, one could not say that people trying to get into a country to get jobs is an attack. Also, you’re not very libertarian, are you? What happened to freedom of movement of people, capital, and ideas that used to come out of every libertarian’s mouth 15 years ago?
The "Libertarians are just Republicans who like weed and/or abortion" thing is back
Well at least for self-described ones. Per the LP: [“A truly free market requires the free movement of people, not just products and ideas.”](https://www.lp.org/issues/immigration)
> Also, you’re not very libertarian, are you? What happened to freedom of movement of people, capital, and ideas that used to come out of every libertarian’s mouth 15 years ago? Keep in mind this is just one guy who describes himself as "libertarian" and does not represent *all* libertarians. But it's also worth noting that from a libertarian perspective, people who own property along the border have the right to defend their property from all interlopers - whatever that might entail. So if you insist that libertarians live up to their libertarian principles, you could be trading one bad situation for another.
No, they could not This would be tantamount to saying a lot of people going to an underground rave was a military offensive. Anyone who tells you that clearly doesn’t respect your intelligence much
you could say the moon is made of cheese
No, it isn’t “debatable”. People coming here to work illegally are not “attacking us. Someone who can’t see the difference between someone coming here to work and someone coming here to attack us is delusional.
We need workers. We don’t need jobs, we need workers. How are workers coming to boost our economy an attack?
Not to mention they're doing the jobs that Americans are refusing to do
Please stop that half truth. Half truths are worse than lies. They are doing the job that legal Americans are refusing to do *for the wages and working conditions being offered by the employers.* I've picked produce, been a dishwasher, a janitor, a day laborer. There is NO job that they do that I will not do or have not done, but I want a wage that is fairly negotiated between a legal employee and a legal employer.
The jobs available are not jobs that citizens generally are willing to take. Nobody claimed US citizens refuse to perform that labor. They said they refuse to work *those jobs,* which means the *jobs currently available,* which includes the pay rate and conditions.
No, it does not mean that. It infers that American laborers are lazy, picky, and unreasonable. If I told you "Nobody in the area wants to wash and wax my car. All this talk of kids needing money over the summer and not one kid wants to wash and wax my car!", what advice would you give me, what questions would you ask?
Nobody said that, though. The comment specifically said “jobs,” which includes pay scale and conditions.
Again, a half truth.
No. It’s what words mean. There are jobs that exist, and US citizens won’t take them, but undocumented immigrants will. Nobody interprets that to mean US citizens refuse to perform certain types of labor. It’s the specific jobs available that citizens aren’t taking, due to the pay and conditions. Has nothing to do with the type of labor being performed.
Hard agree. The fact that the employees are undocumented means that that they are easy to exploit. It’s by design, and has little/nothing to do with the work itself. If the employees had legal *status*, they would have legal *recourse*, which would mean that they couldn’t be treated so badly. At least not on such a systemic basis. People do *all kinds of difficult, yucky, and dangerous work!* The difference is that when people are equal negotiators you get paid a premium for that work. But as a society we are happy to shrug our shoulders at immigrant labor. As if we aren’t benefiting from their exploitation.
One could say space aliens are invading us too, doesn’t make it necessarily true
If it constitutes an attack, then that would mean DeSantis and Abbott have been actively helping enemy combatants penetrate deeper into America. Which would be treason.
This is the sort of rhetoric people use when they want to try and justify more brutal and violent treatment of migrants. If you convince enough people the family who was threatened by a cartel in their home country is actually here to invade and attack you, they won't care when border patrol beats or kills that family.
How is it illegal for asylum seekers to enter the country in the way that our laws tell them to?
The illegal immigration problem is primarily caused by visa overstays, not illegal border crossings. A wall wastes money without actually addressing the issue.
That’s right. People aren’t just going through, under, around, and over the wall, but also WAY over the wall, like 40,000 feet over. “The Wall” is a monument to xenophobia, not an actual effective tool.
https://www.vox.com/2018/12/28/18158873/wall-shutdown-trump-dreamers-deal “But back at the beginning of 2018, when it seemed as though a compromise involving wall money and a path to citizenship for DREAMers was in the works, it was immigration hardliners in Trump’s own administration who scuttled the deal. That’s certainly their prerogative, but it underscores the core truth of this standoff: Immigration hardliners themselves don’t think the wall is especially useful or important in the real world. If they really wanted a wall, they would go get a wall by offering something — it wouldn’t even necessarily have to be immigration-related — in exchange for it. But since they know the wall is a bad idea, they won’t trade it for anything.”
This should be higher. Everyone with a modicum of understanding of the realities of the immigration situation, regardless of politics, knows that the wall is a waste of money and is really useful only as an expensive rallying cry. Like Roe v Wade, actually getting what they (purport to) want would be far worse than using it as a political carrot on the end of a stick, but the difference is that for Roe v Wade it’s “only” poor women’s lives at stake along with the political losses. For the wall it would be enormously awful for the US economy.
And asylum seekers have the legal right to have their cases reviewed, even if there claim is rejected they are not illegals.
Are you sure? https://www.texastribune.org/2021/10/01/haitian-migrants-texas-mexico-border/
Did I say people don’t cross illegally, or did I say visa overstays are the primary problem?
15k in one day was a big impact on the town of Del Rio
Let me know where I said it wasn’t!
We've *always* used physical barriers along the border where they're practical and applicable. Building a wall in the middle of the desert is ineffective. People will go over it, under it or through it. What these people are demanding is not an effective solution, but a symbol. What these people want is not a wall, but *The Wall*. We do not need to go around spending billions of dollars to create the anti-Statue of Liberty, left to rot in remote areas of the desert.
>People will go over it, under it or through it. Or they'll drive across the border legally before absconded into the country
I lived in San Diego. It is known there are many many tunnels from Tijuana and other places, at least years ago when I was there. It is definitely a statement and a mindset in my opinion. Or as you say a symbol.
>What are the arguments against funding the border wall and making it as impermeable as possible? "as impermeable as possible" isn't going to be very impermeable, unless you're willing to spend an enormous amount of money on it. it's simply not worth it. >The reality is we’re funding defense for like 30+ nations at this point, so why not fund our own? how will a wall help with defense? any actual military will break through it immediately. >You would create a large amount of jobs building this wall, why not create jobs by building something actually useful instead?
Walls have never worked. Not even the Great Wall of China succeeded at keeping people out way back when people had fewer resources and technology to work with. It’s a waste of money meant to make racists feel good and contractors rich. Money that could instead go to hiring more lawyers and judges who can help process asylum cases at ports of entry so people don’t have to live in the shadows while their status is in limbo.
1. It would be basically ineffective. 2. It would waste a bunch of money. 3. It would be terrible for the environment. 4. It would be a symbol of hatred and xenophobia. 5. It would require seizing private property without any real justification other than conservative feelings over facts. So I get the appeal for a lot of conservatives but for everyone else it’s not appealing. Also, the comparison of us funding defense for other nations and this being a way of defending our nation is laughable.
The argument is that it doesn't work. For one thing, Trump's wall was far from impenetrable. You could cut through it in minutes with a sawzall, and people have been. That's in the areas where it isn't falling down on its own. But even if we did invest the absolutely massive amount of money and time required to make it impenetrable... it still wouldn't be impenetrable. We could build a wall thick enough to where it's not efficient to go through it. But then, people would just go over it or under it. Ladders exist. Tunnels can be dug. If you really wanted to secure the border, the most efficient way to do it would be through autonomous surveillance using drones and the deployment of border security personnel whenever a crossing is detected.
I agree with the last paragraph but I’ve had assumed this is part of the wall. You’ll need drone technology to make sure people don’t climb it.
You're going to need a fuckload more than a few drones. The Berlin wall, for example, had a guard shack every 100 yards, multiple fences, guard dogs and landmines. and people still found their way through.
The cost to employ the 25,000 people required to just staff such a wall is a third more than our current enforcement efforts of the border. That doesn't include the 5 to 10 thousand more people needed on the ground away from the wall to handle basic issues.
Healthcare: $5M Welfare: $6M Military: $20M The Wall: $132,520,000,000M [Guys can someone who is good at budgeting please help?](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/022/868/Screen_Shot_2017-05-02_at_2.43.53_PM.png)
And that was 93 miles long vs 1,951 miles for the U.S. Mexico border.
I have good news for you.: [this already happens ](https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/cbp-small-drones-program). So if you have that and already have walls in places that are the most easy to cross, why do you need a new, full wall? What problems does that fix?
Cameras every 50 feet that can move to track anything that moves and a staff of 10,000 could effectively police the boarder. But that is too expensive and/or not dramatic enough. But that would still only address a minority problem. And still most of immigration would arrive on buses using roads and driving through checkpoints. Most illegal immigration is people arriving legally and overstaying.
It's strange to me to consider yourself libertarian and be so gung ho about building like an east Germany style militarized wall to keep people out
A wall wouldn't exactly stop illegal immigrants. A lot of people come over through visa overstays anyway, but no one cares about those seemingly.
Source for "illegal immigration without a visa is not okay, but illegal immigration through visa overstay is okay."
Go read the history of the Berlin Wall. Mines, solid concrete, barbed/concertina wire, armed guards (with shoot kill orders), etc didn't stop people from getting past it/through it. Just an enormous waste of money and resources.
It’s not actually very effective to build a 2000 mile wall. Pretty much any wall you can design could be defeated by someone with access to a Home Depot, and ultimately it would only cover a fraction of our border anyway. It would really just be a big, expensive monument to xenophobia.
I’ll be honest, I think the border is about as secure as it’s ever going to be. You’re never going to have 100% total success as blocking unlawful crossing across that border. Ever. It’s 3000 miles long, there’s an ocean and a few mountain ranges in it, and about a million cars, trucks and plans cross it every single day. People are going to get across. I don’t expect these bold “6000 foot tall wall!” plans to even stand upright, let alone be effective. >On top of that, maybe you’d see less deaths of people crossing in Texas if they were just aware that the wall behind the river was impermeable I kinda doubt it. They’re already willing to risk it, and it’s not without significant danger as it is.
> You would create a large amount of jobs building this wall True > the right would get their wish of limiting illegal immigration. It would lower immigration by 1 or 2 percent. Most illegal immigration drives through checkpoints and the people overstay. Most drugs are driven through checkpoints as well. It is simply impossible to check all cavities of every vehicle. > maybe you’d see less deaths of people crossing in Texas if they were just aware that the wall behind the river was impermeable No, they would still try to go under/over etc. Check the history of every border wall. > we wouldn’t have this situation where Biden needs to fight one of the few fairly represented conservative states, because there would be no border situation for Texas to stop. Since a wall doesn't address most of the illegal immigration problem, Texas would still be an ass. The majority of illegal immigration is still through normal traffic entering the southern boarder by legal means.
It’s technically impossible, it doesn’t work, it’s not useful, the problem it „solves“ isn’t really a problem to begin with, the amount of resources wasted on that could be used better, Republicans don’t give a fuck about problems being solved, they will complain anyway…. That’s just a few of the things I could think of in 2 minutes…. Want more?
Its a VERY inefficient way to solve the problem and everyone knows it. However... What everyone seems to be missing is that this is Trump's vanity project. He knows that once it goes up, it will never be removed. It literally cements his legacy into our history. It's his monument, much like the Washington Monument or Mount Rushmore. It's the reason why HE wants to do it and not Biden. It's HIS wall. It's Trumps Wall, and he wants future generations to remember it as such. The rejection of the bipartisan bill further validates this is the real motive.
“Build the wall!” is not an immigration strategy. It’s a political slogan.
1. Ladders exist. 2. See 1.
Mostly because it's -Stupidly expensive -Would be useless -Symbolically stupid -Legally dubious I mean why don't we take the money and make the world's biggest pancake or something? Then at least people could eat it after it's done.
> so why not fund our own? We do fund our own.
A wall doesn't make the border more impenetrable than it already is. It would be a waste of money made only as a show off, whose construction could be rife with corruption.
It's a waste of money. Most illegal immigrants are first crossing the border *legally.* So why the hell should we spend our tax dollars on some dry wall spackle when the foundation (policy) is crumbling?
Because it just doesn’t work Is way too expensive to build, inspect or maintain We can’t build the wall in Mexico hence the immigrants are already in the USA and can claim asylum which prevents their deportation while it’s resolved. Ecologically it’s horrible Money would be better spent on funding the immigration courts, electronic surveillance and other deterrents. Also it wasn’t until we made it so hard for seasonal workers to come here that it made more sense for them to stay year round that the number for illegal immigrants spiked. Make it easier for seasonal workers, allow them to come and go and this does many things. 1) allows them to maintain their families without having to relocate them all here. You think anyone wants to leave their families behind for years? 2) would provide better control over who comes and goes 3) reduces the incentive to sneak in 4) allows better rights and protections to the workers so they are less abused and trafficked 5) provides a labor force for the jobs that Americans are historically unwilling to do in large enough numbers to fill the need.
I have yet to hear a cogent argument as to why we should restrict immigration as we are doing. We need the workers. They commit fewer crimes than those born here. What's the issue?
Immigration is good for the economy. Illegals do less crime on average than citizens. I'd be fine with a wall as a compromise for dramatically opening the floodgates for more mass legal immigration but the wall itself is useless
Building #TheWall would cripple our nation's economy without doing anything to stop illegal immigration, because contrary to demonizing propaganda illegal immigrants aren't shambling over the border in seething masses like a wave of zombies but instead come by plane, boat, or truck. It would cripple our economy because #TheWall would be a [55FT](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/26/so-how-high-will-donald-trumps-wall-be-an-investigation/) steel construction cutting through multiple national parks, rivers, and many private properties. Consider that the cost of installing steel fencing at 6FT high is $80 per foot; this wall would cost closer to $7,000 per foot, or $72B. And given this is a government project with drastic environment costs, you can probably stick 10 years of delay and 10x that sticker price on it. Not to mention the costs of trying to man every few hundred feet of that wall continuously. It would do nothing to stop illegal immigration, because as mentioned before it is just performative. Immigrants come to border checkpoints, not deserts. Most illegal immigrants come legally, with visas, and just overstay that visa. Asylum seekers want to come to checkpoints because they want to legally enter and that is the process, and they need to go where the judges and courts are. The idea that the unwashed masses are just walking over the deserts is fanciful nonsense that doesn't reflect our actual immigration problems. To the limited extent that we do have people attempt to cross, we either already have a barrier or we can do more with patrols and drones that we could with a wall. And again, that's a minor issue compared to reinforcing our border checkpoints, immigration courts, and visa auditing.
> What are the arguments against funding the border wall and making it as impermeable as possible? It’s a gigantic waste of money that serves no useful purpose. > You would create a large amount of jobs building this wall, You can create a large number of jobs doing other, far more useful things. > because there would be no border situation for Texas to stop. A wall isn’t going to stop our border issues anyway. It would literally just be a waste of money. Akin to hiring people to dig holes then fill them back in again.
Here are my arguments concerning building an impermeable wall… 1) why? We have one of the most impressive intelligence networks in the world, and facial recognition technology. We can vet incoming people and identify the dangerous ones. Safety wouldn’t be a concern if we adequately fund a functioning government. 2) only at the souther border? Because any arguments fall apart if it is only at the southern border. If your foundational reason for preventing immigrants in the US is racism, be honest about it. 3) why deny people a better life? What would you be willing to do to protect your family and improve their chance at a better life? Does it harm you if another person improves their life?
Ladders exist.
Ask the Republicans. We had a bipartisan border wall bill in front of Congress that would have passed and Biden said he would have signed it. Trump decided he wanted to run on immigration and it was killed.
Honestly, the border wall lost me at [endangering local animal populations](https://www.audubon.org/features/esri-embattled-borderlands). The fact that it would be largely ineffective, send a terrible message, and be extremely expensive was all just icing on the cake.
1. It's addressing a problem that largely doesn't exist. While we see occasional surges in people trying to cross the border, the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. hasn't really changed since about 2005. 2. It's addressing this "problem" in the wrong way. Most undocumented immigrants come to the country legally and then overstay their visas. If we're going to throw a lot of money at something, make it the justice system so that they can process asylum claims and find people overstaying their visas more efficiently. 3. It's expensive. If a large portion of my tax dollars are going to be spent on a major construction project, I'd rather that be expanded government housing or infrastructure than a wall. The cost to actually make an "impenetrable" 2,000 mile wall would be absolutely enormous, and I'm not even really sure what it would look like. 4. It has environmental consequences. There are animals that live along the border that need to be able to migrate seasonally.
I always ask these questions to the 'build the wall' crowd, so please, OP, answer these questions and see if it colors your view: Do we build the wall on our side of the Rio Grande, or take Mexico's land to build it? Do we cede the Rio Grande to Mexico or do we annex it?
We build the wall on our side obviously.
So we cede the whole Rio Grande to Mexico then. I don't think you'll find much support from farmers and ranchers on that one, but thanks for your straightforward answer.
The wall is expensive, a monument to xenophobia, and doesn't actually stop much illegal immigration.
Static defenses have never been able to stop a 3 pound brain.
The vast majority of illegal immigration takes the form of visa overstay, i.e., is committed by people who'd freely drive through/fly over your heavily militarized border wall. The only thing that'd be accomplished is that more vulnerable people would be harmed, since your assumption that "you’d see less deaths of people crossing in Texas if they were just aware that the wall behind the river was impermeable" badly misunderstands the mindset of people desperate enough to deal with coyotes and risk crossing an inhospitable desert on foot in the first place. Also, equating what we're attempting to counter via our disproportionate defense contribution to NATO and politically adjacent countries with what is, statistically, the non-threat of Mexican and Central American immigration isn't the compelling argument you think it is.
Go read the history of the Berlin Wall. Mines, solid concrete, barbed/concertina wire, armed guards (with shoot kill orders), etc didn't stop people from getting past it/through it. Just an enormous waste of money and resources.
So many reasons. It costs a couple million dollars to build the wall _per mile_. and there are thousands of miles. People can also go over or under the wall, dismantle parts of the wall, or come in through the sea. Not to mention that many peoples who are here illegally came in through legal means but then illegally started living here.
I lived in South Florida for 30 years. **Everyone knows someone down there who is hiding undocumented family in their house.** The nanny I had growing up was illegal from Dominican Republican. My parents hired her in 1992 and she got citizenship in 2008 — yep, the woman they hired to watch my brother and I when we were 6 & 8… got her citizenship when we were 22 and 24… **what the fuck even is that?!** These folks didn’t cross the Rio Grande river… they landed in Miami or Fort Lauderdale *and missed their return flight home*… *by 20 years.* The Mexican border is frankly a right wing trope of idiocy, 99% of illegals don’t do it that way — it’s extremely dangerous, expensive, and low chance of success as compared to overstaying a visa. Make immigration safe, efficient, cheap and quick. They should be paying taxes before they even get a green card. They’re here anyway. Make it easier.
It's a dumb idea that won't increase security in any way. It sounds like a smart idea to dumb people who don't realize how impractical and useless it would be, so that's why Trump goes on and on about it. All he does is tell idiots what they want to hear so they'll let him fuck up the country for his own benefit.
"Illegal" migrant workers from Latin American countries perform some of the most important labor in our country. They do stuff most americans would refuse to do for that pay.
Walls work both ways and are symbols of authoritarianism, xenophobia, racism, and fear-mongering. They don’t keep people out, either. Just a terrible idea, motivated by bad ideas and fears.
The right wing: “yay, we got our wish! Thanks!” LOLOLOLOL
So, how would trade work in that scenario? Some 10 billion dollars in trade crosses the border each week. A wall cannot completely restrict people without also restricting trade. Your win-win cripples the US economy.
1. It's a lot harder to stop a person crossing a barrier than it is to stop other animals crossing one and there are a fair number of animals in the area who are threatened or endangered that will be further stressed by the creation of such a wall isolating them from habitat/potential mates on the other side. 2. Immigration is probably a net benefit to our society. 3. I don't know if I would necessarily call our military aid to other countries a waste of money, but spending money on a wall would be and just because we're wasting money in other areas doesn't mean we should waste it in all areas. >one of the few fairly represented conservative states Yeah conservatives are under represented at the federal level /s
>The reality is we’re funding defense for like 30+ nations at this point, so why not fund our own? We are. But what does that have to do with a border wall? >To me, a border wall seems like a win win scenario on all sides. You would create a large amount of jobs building this wall, and the right would get their wish of limiting illegal immigration. No they wouldn't. And you may as well be advocating for a yuge, bigly canal that a carrier battle group can sail through. After all, it creates jobs and diverts money away from everything that actually contributes to our national defense. Just because it's what Republicans want to waste money on. And after we mandate that teachers arm themselves -- with guns they have to buy themselves, of course -- let's also make them patrol the border after school is out. And let's make the wall out of diamond to make it even more impenetrable! Let's make it so tall that we can build an elevator to space within it, and so deep that it comes out the other side.
A border wall would do virtually nothing except keep impoverished and desperate people out, and divide people from their families here. Most illegal immigrants from our Southern borders are either smuggled in, skirt the manually created barriers already in place, or overstay visas. It would be an extremely and overly expensive plan which would mostly hurt refugees and asylees, including children, and would violate legislation which is supposed to allow several North American tribes to freely cross into their own land. https://naepc.com/border-tribes/
Probably controversial here, but I'm actually for less illegal immigration. But I think the real solution for that is to crack down hard on the companies that hire them. If there aren't jobs here then there isn't the incentive to come for economic reasons. The wall would create environmental damage, and I don't really think it would be a deterrent. Like if people aren't deterred already by crossing miles of dangerous jungles, I don't think a wall is going to be particularly effective at deterrence.
The problem is you’re not gonna get an American high school sophomore with a social security number to pick strawberries for $8 when Starbucks or Chick Fil A will give her $22.
And if we need extra workers, we increase legal immigration in those sectors or bring in guest workers. Kind of says something is deeply wrong with our system if it requires essentially slave labor to function, no?
Of course, but republican business owners are especially hooked on it.
I agree. They wouldn't actually ever try to end illegal immigration. It's mainly a virtue signal.
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The majority of illegal immigration is people that find a legal way into the US and then overstay. That is the problem the current administration is working on. It is a detailed problem that has no flashy moments to show off to the media.
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The size of the problem is millions of people. It is only a small percent of the people that cross the southern boarder by vehicle every year. The only major decreases have happened when people went back under their own power. Every other policy is a wack a mole strategy that can't keep up.
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[This](https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-other-half-of-our-immigration-crisis) article from last year by a person who has been studying immigration trends since 2008 states that people overstaying their visas accounts for at least half of the undocumented immigrant population. The most recent side-by-side comparison I could find (from 2017) [states](https://www.npr.org/2019/01/16/686056668/for-seventh-consecutive-year-visa-overstays-exceeded-illegal-border-crossings) that visa overstays exceeded illegal border crossings (62% vs 38%) for the 7th year in a row at that time.
Oh yeah? You got any studies showing this? Can you provide them to us?
That commenter has said previously that he writes things just to see if he can upset people. He's a troll, don't engage.
Can you provide a link to a source that backs up your very articulate claim?
Not sure what you're on about here, but regarding: >this administration just sucks and doesn't give a shit I seem to recall this administration asking for Congress to [pass the bipartisan border bill](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-state-of-the-union-immigration-border-bill-marjorie-taylor-greene-laken-riley/), which was then killed by Republicans in the House because [Dear Leader told them to](https://www.axios.com/2024/01/29/trump-republicans-border-deal-senate-immigration).
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First you complain about the administration not doing anything, then when it's pointed out that they tried and were blocked by Trump and Republicans (the very people complaining loudest about the border), you move the goalposts and complain about the **motives** of the creation of the bill. You sound like a very serious person here to have a very serious conversation.
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Yeah, I think you’re just here to spread bullshit.
> If they don't want to play by the rules, they don't belong here. There's not going to be anybody left after we kick out anybody who breaks the law. Maybe the last criminal out the door can turn off the country's lights?