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RedDeerGuy1's avatar

Is a border wall design flawed?

Asked by RedDeerGuy1 (24945points) April 10th, 2018

One can just get a drone to take turns taking people over the wall again and again.

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14 Answers

Zaku's avatar

The whole idea of the border wall is flawed.

It’s terrible and destructive for wild animal populations. IMO creating another environmental disaster is more than enough reason not to do it.

It’s not going to stop illegal immigration, at all.

It’s a ridiculous waste of effort, materials, and taxpayer money.

It’s a giant offensive symbol of xenophobia and intolerance and fear.

It’s ugly and stupid.

Future generations will remember the wall (aborted project, hopefully) as a physical symbol for how fear and ignorance drove us to follow an idiot clown con-man, deface our landscape, destroy innocent animals, for a pointless xenophobic pork-barrel project.

Darth_Algar's avatar

You don’t even need drones (even if one were capable of supporting a person’s weight while still remaining aloft) when you have private aircraft and boats. That’s how the drug cartels of the 1980s got much of their product in. You could always tunnel under the wall as well. The border wall is a dumb, futile idea. It was dumb and futile when the Chinese tried it. It’s dumb and futile now.

kritiper's avatar

Not if it’s built and watched over like the Berlin wall was.

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

MR. Trump tear down this wall.

johnpowell's avatar

The Berlin wall was to keep people in. That changes the dynamic.

kritiper's avatar

@johnpowell It would do the reverse just as well…just as easy to shoot people going in as going out…

Zaku's avatar

Berlin Wall length: 91–96 miles. Result: Suffering and oppression and separation of families, needless deaths, persecutions and hostility, wasted time and energy.
folly factor 157

Existing US-Mexican border wall: 700 miles
folly factor: 803

Trump wall proposal: ~1000 miles
folly factor: 1200+

Link to article and video of Trump chanting ’‘build that wall!’’ like an angry cretin… and more… .

kritiper's avatar

Build that wall! If you can…

johnpowell's avatar

@kritiper :: The difference is if you shoot your own populous the people on the the other side don’t really give a shit. Which is a internal problem. But once you start shooting people from other countries they might stop buying your corn.

kritiper's avatar

@johnpowell uh I think the guys who are shooting know who’s trying to get in vs. who might want to get out.
If somebody wants out, you help them.
If they’re trying to get in, you shoot them. What’s so hard about that???
The point is that if you want a wall that is impenetrable, you set it up to be that way. You don’t worry about the minor consequences.
Besides, I’m not the one who wants to build a wall, I just want them to build a wall IF THEY CAN. Let the builders worry about the details!

Zaku's avatar

@kritiper “If they’re trying to get in, you shoot them. What’s so hard about that???”
– um… really?

kritiper's avatar

@Zaku Really. That’s what makes it work! “Desperate times call for desperate measures!” It’s all in the details!

Zaku's avatar

@kritiper What desperate times are calling for shooting people?

rojo's avatar

here is a Cato Institute paper on why we should not build a wall. A Wall Is an Impractical, Expensive, and Ineffective Border Plan. Cato is a prominent right wing think tank.

Key Points from the Cato Institute paper:

1. Walls don’t work. Illegal immigrants have tunneled underneath and/or erected ramps up and down walls to simply drive over them. People find a way. When East Germany erected its wall, it created a military zone, staffed by booted, machine-gun carrying guards ready to shoot to kill. Yet thousands managed to make it to West Germany anyway. More to the point, do we really want to model ourselves after communist East Germany?

2. Most illegal immigrants are “overstayers.” They come to the US legally — for vacations, business, to study, etc. — and then STAY past their visas. By 2012, overstayers accounted for 58% (THE MAJORITY!) of all unauthorized immigrants. A wall is meaningless here!

3. Walls have little impact on drugs being brought in to the US. According to the DEA, almost all drugs come in through legal points of entry, hidden in secret containers and/or among legit goods in tractor-trailers. A wall will have little to no impact on the influx of drugs into our country.

4. It’s environmentally impractical. Walls have a hard time making it through extreme weather. For example, in 2011, a flood in Arizona washed away 40 feet of STEEL fencing. Torrential rains and raging waters do serious damage. Also, conservative sources generally do not address the environmental harm that walls create, but there is plenty of documentation available that show its potential for irreparable damage to both plant and animal life.

5. A wall would forces the U.S. government to take land from private citizens in eminent domain battles. Private citizens own much of the land slated for the wall. The costs of the government snatching private land — and the legal battles that would ensue — are incalculable.

6. Border patrol agents don’t like concrete or steel walls because they block surveillance capabilities. In other words, they can’t mobilize correctly to meet challenges. So in many ways, a wall makes their job more difficult.

7. Border patrol agents say, “Walls are meaningless without agents and technology to back them up.” Are we prepared to pour countless billions annually — after the wall is built — to create a nearly 2,000 mile, militarized 24-hour surveillance border operation? Because according to patrol agents, that’s the only way a wall would work. Again, are we really, going to use East Germany, a brutal communist state, as our model here?
Are we seriously going to model ourselves on East Germany and their wall? A 1979 celebration in E. Berlin.

8. Where walls have been built, there was “no discernable impact on the influx of unauthorized aliens.” In other words, they came in elsewhere, primarily where natural barriers such as water or mountainous regions precluded a wall.

9. An unintended consequence is that a wall blocks farmworkers from EXITING when their invaluable seasonal work is done. Farmers are against the wall because it makes getting cheap seasonal labor almost impossible as few American citizens want or can even do those jobs. And if seasonal worker do get in, a wall makes it harder for them to leave! A wall traps migrant farm laborers in our country.

10. Trump’s $5 billion is a laughable drop in the bucket for what would ACTUALLY be needed. For example, according to the Cato Institute: An estimate for a border wall area that only covered 700 miles was originally 1.2 billion. How much did it REALLY cost? SEVEN BILLION. And that’s only for 700 miles. Whatever we think it’s going to cost, experience shows us we have to multiply it by more than 500%.

11. According to MIT engineers, the wall would cost $31.2 billion. Homeland Security estimates it at $22 billion. Given the pattern of spending mentioned in number 10 (plus Murphy’s Law), that means we’re really talking about pouring endless billions into something that doesn’t even work. And, of course, we taxpayers will be footing the bill, not Mexico. Given all the drawbacks, is that REALLY the best use of our taxes?

Evidently even conservatives think the idea is stupid, useless and a complete waste of time and money.and that is why Democrats should NOT compromise with Trump to give him his monument to fear and ignorance.

NOTE: I did not write the bullet points, it came from This article by Vickie Shecter.

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