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Below is our take on the realities surrounding the border wall debate. Throughout this article we use the words wall and fence to mean the same thing – a physical barrier. The form of that barrier is irrelevant to this policy discussion.
Cost – the President is requesting $5.6B to build part of a border wall. That sounds like a lot of money, but because the federal government is so large, spending initiatives need to be cast as a percentage of the total federal budget to be viewed in proper context. In the case of the border wall, that $5.6B amounts to 0.00127th of the total federal budget for 2019. You read that correctly. As an analogy – if you had $100 in your pocket, the portion of that money needed to pay for the wall would be 12.7 cents. The House and Senate Democrats, whose profligate spending doubled the national debt during the Obama administration, are now telling us this amount is too expensive.
Scope – the border between the US and Mexico is 1,989 miles long. At present about 580 of those miles already have some type of physical barrier, ranging from a simple small fence to a high concrete wall. The $5.6B currently being requested by the President would repair/rebuild about 110 miles of the existing 580-mile wall. It would also add roughly 100 miles of “new” wall, thus extending the total length to 680 miles. That still leaves over 1,300 miles of the U.S./Mexico border without any man-made barrier at all.¹
Rationale – Amidst all the debate about asylum seekers, illegals, drug smugglers, and criminals that are crossing our southern border lies a simple math problem. The total number of people seeking to enter the U.S. at the southern border, either illegally or by way of asylum, far exceeds the “adjudication” capacity of our border system. This fact is not in dispute nor is it new. However, there are two fundamentally different philosophies presently being debated about how to deal with this problem.
a) Construct an effective wall/fence for the purpose of deterring and thus decreasing the number of illegal entry cases that need to be adjudicated. There’s no complexity to this course of action, it’s the plain and simple traditional solution that has proven to work for many countries throughout history.²
b) Allow asylum requesters who enter the U.S. to live in the U.S. while their applications are being processed. Trust that they will comply with instructions and limits placed on their stay and that they will return if their application is denied. This would relieve the pressure on overcrowded detention facilities at the border and encourage crossings at official ports of entry thus reducing illegal crossings and obviating the need for additional barriers.
Prior Congressional action – In 2006 the House and Senate passed a law called the Secure Fence Act. It authorized the construction of roughly 700 miles of physical fencing along the U.S./Mexico border. Among the Senators who voted in favor of this bill at the time were Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer. All three also supported the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 which included even more fencing along the border. Chuck Schumer actually sponsored this bill. Between then and now, Senator Schumer has quite obviously changed his philosophy on the efficacy of a physical barrier at the border. So much so, that he is now vigorously acting to prevent a barrier from either being extended or even repaired. His reversal is so complete, he even proclaimed on national television that the border crisis is “manufactured” – a cruelly insulting statement for the family of a California police officer killed just two weeks ago by a recently-arrived illegal alien. Senator Schumer has not explained why his position has changed, especially now with the vastly increased number of people in “caravans” attempting to cross the border. The only obvious difference between then and now is that Donald Trump is President and Schumer consistently displays a clear animus towards him. We believe that animus, and little else, is governing Senator Schumer’s behavior. It is not unlike the late Senator John McCain’s actions in his final year of Senate service. These, including his own funeral arrangements, were consumed by his revulsion of the President. Schumer’s actions appear more comparable to an intractable “grudge” and are a great distance from the conduct of a statesman.
Government Shutdown – A sideshow of sorts accompanying this border debate is a government “shutdown”, which isn’t a complete shutdown. 25% of the federal government, comprising 7 departments, is not currently funded to operate. However, within each of those unfunded departments, many functions and personnel have been deemed “essential” and are still operating by way of the household equivalent of a credit card (including employee salaries). Once the “shutdown” ends, the government will payoff that accumulated credit card balance in full as has been the case with every government shutdown in modern history. The reality is that nearly all of the federal government is actually still operating despite the term “shutdown” being hysterically screeched by the media in its headlines. In addition, the claim that the President is presently refusing to “reopen” the government is technically inaccurate. At this moment, there is no bill for the President to sign that would fund those 7 departments. The only way for the President to receive a bill for his signature is for both the House and Senate to first pass a bill. That hasn’t happened yet in the new Congress. The new House did pass a funding bill, but it’s language is such that there aren’t enough votes for it to pass in the Senate.
So what now? The President would be fully justified in declaring a National Emergency at the southern border in order to access funding needed to secure the border, including a wall. That would likely spawn various lawsuits in the hope that an activist federal judge will “stay” the President’s action as was the case with the original Executive Order for the travel ban. Ultimately, the Supreme Court upheld the travel ban order, as would likely occur in this case if it were ever to reach that court. In that eventuality, the “wall” would be built, just not as soon as the President desires.
It’s tempting to believe and therefore be disgusted that all of this is the result of a dispute over a miniscule expenditure (relative to the federal budget) which the opposing party has philosophically supported multiple times in the past. We believe the feud is much more about uncontrolled hatred the Democrat leadership continues to harbor against the President than any touted belief that the wall will be ineffective in controlling the very real border crisis.
¹ A significant portion of the U.S./Mexico border has natural barriers in the form of mountains and wide rivers.
² Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi proclaimed last night on national television that border walls are “ineffective”, but never said why or how she knows that. It would be an interesting explanation since physical border barriers have been the “go to” solution for centuries, not only for countries, but for all manner of public and private facilities as well as people’s homes.