The Official "Wall" Thread

looks like plans are under way to build a bigly wall. here are some details:

5%-20% import tax on goods from Mexico

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38764079?ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=facebook

It’s gonna be massive.

#YUGE

[video:https://youtu.be/VHk6clzLeMM]

wait a minute… I thought aren’t almost all brick layers Mexican immigrants?

Is a wall the best way?

I mean what if we just setup movement detection lasers and corresponding auto-guns to shoot tranq darts then capture them?

Trump knows about cost/benefit analysis. This is one yuuge cost/benefit problem.

^lasers can do it right?

[video:https://youtu.be/x53KXfJl4aY width:200 height:200]

I wish Trump would watch this documentary that covered George W bush’s wall. It’s hilarious to watch but sad we are still trying

^ Would that be the same wall that the majority of democrats in the Senate, including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, HRC, Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, and Chuck Schumer, voted for?

Wonder what precautions they will be taking for migratory animals, seeing as how he wants to defund plenty of scientific research I doubt there will be much investigation done on that but we’ll see. Not wholly opposed to a wall, i dont think it will do much but if itll make repubs happy give it to them. Take the funding from the defense budget though

Yes. I don’t understand the point of the comment. I’m an actual nonpartisan, so I just call it as a see it. Every Republican except Lincoln Chafee voted for it. A majority 26 of the 43 Dems voted for it. It was part of W’s plan for immigration reform. It turned out not to be the best idea, but for some reason we are doubling down on it. Details below.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/109-2006/s262

https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061026-1.html

^ Who says it wasn’t the best idea. Illegal crossings dropped by 18% after the additional wall/fencing was built. People eventually found other routes, but the areas that got the new wall/fence became more secure. I don’t support building a wall because it’s too expensive and think there are better ways to handle illegal immigration, but if you’re going to build a wall/fence, you have to cover the entire border for it to be effective in the long term.

^Yep, I’m on the same page. What I should have said is that the fence as proposed wasn’t the best idea, because Congress only approved a small piece of the funding that was necessary to build it. It was a political move that didn’t have Congressional support. Later, DHS was given discretion on whether or not to build the wall with the funds and decided to do other things with the money.

So, the fence (or wall, whatever) was never actually built. I think DHS stated that as of 2007 only 70 or so miles was constructed. Also, a 2008 billcalled the Secure Fence Act of 2008 was brought forward to complete the fence, but never got to the floor. Also the 18% referenced was from 2008, which could have had to do with other economic realities in addition to more difficult crossing. I believe border control has actually said that although they originally attributed some portion of the decrease to the fence they later determined that measurements were inaccurate as immigrants had simply found other, less monitored routes into the US.

It is an interesting dynamic. There are a bunch of disenfranchised factory workers in the US whose labor was undercut by China and automation. I wonder if without immigration they would have less friction transitioning to the next available job? For example, we would have cheap shoes or whatever from China but apples would be more expensive because we’d have citizens picking them. If citizens were picking them at a higher labor cost, would we already have automated the whole agricultural process? When you go down this road, it really is an endgame of automation for everything and a need for UBI. There is just no other way I can see things working out.

Are you upset with calling it George’s wall? I don’t particularly care whose wall it is. Let’s call it Obama’s wall then. Nothing about my comment relies on who put it there. It’s still a hilarious documentary and absurd we are going to try again.

The cost associated with those 70 miles is just absurd and all the practical difficulties are just nuts

Yeah, this isn’t Civilization 5. There is no Great Works bonus.

Not sure I agree with this. In the long-term, don’t smugglers just build tunnels to get under the wall? When there’s a will there’s a way and what not…

That documentary has funny videos of not just tunneling but also driving over the wall. It’s only like thirty minutes, but really interesting. There are also environmental impacts that make sense but aren’t intuitive.

Last analysis I saw from Pew, we haven’t been net inflows of migrants since the recession. I just don’t understand where the importance of these issues seems to come from (for a liberal equivalent, i’d put the wage gap as a similar sort of issue I just don’t understand the emotions behind that)

so if they build this wall and illegal immigration goes down 10% is that a win, how about 15%?

how will people judge if the wall was a success?

Wages increase to an unbearably high level.

Do you lock your car when you park it at the mall, airport, train station, etc? Car thieves will get into your car locked or unlocked if they want to because, when there’s a will there’s a way.

Again, I’m not a Trump supporter or a supporter of building the wall, but if you’re going to build it, you need to build it everywhere and build it right.

^ So you’re agreeing with me that the wall is just a deterrent and not a solution to the problem? I think reasonable people can agree that spending that much on a wall (directly or indirectly) which is just a deterrent is pretty silly.