About immigration. I mean, I love La Shawn normally, but stuff like this just irritates me.
I mean really, people in non-border states don’t know what they’re talking about.
It seems to me that there are only two sides in this debate:
Non-Border states: Yeah, we should close the border with Mexico. Border States: The border is closed? Someone should tell the Mexicans…
Do the math people!
Look, the border is 2,000 miles long, or 11 million feet.
Let’s say decide to implement your own border closing. The government must be stupid right? We just need to put up a fence. Well, lets see how much that would cost. We’ll want a 12’ high fence at least, plus about a foot of razor wire on top.
Looking around the internet, that will run us about $140/foot or $1.5 billion.
That’s for the fencing. Now we’re going to need some guard towers every 500 feet. Let’s say its $10,000 for a simple guard tower. We’ll need 22,000 of those, so that’s another $220 million. We’re assuming that the guards don’t mind peeing in a bucket, otherwise we’ll need 11 million feet of plumbing…
Total so far: $1.7 billion.
We’ll need 22,000 guards, at $100,000/year, 3 shifts a day, so that’s $6.6 billion in salaries every year.
Total so far: $1.7 billion for a fence with guard towers, plus $6.6 billion/year for guard salaries.
Have you non-border-state people shut up yet? No? Ok, well these guards need some way to get to the guard tower, so now we need 2,000 miles of road along the border. Say $800,000 a mile, so that’s another $1.6 billion.
Total so far: $1.7 billion for a fence with guard towers, plus $1.6 billion for a road so the guards can get to the towers, plus $6.6 billion/year for guard salaries.
Now we’ll have to maintain the fence and the road, figure 10%/year in maintenance costs for the fence, since it will be getting actively attacked, and 5% for the road. So that’s $250 million/year in maintenance costs.
Total so far: $9.9 billion the first year, $6.9 billion/year after that.
So ignoring the fact that our guards don’t have uniforms, guns, bathrooms, helicopters, training or supervision, we’re spending $9.9 billion to keep out 3-5 million Mexican immigrants/year, or $2000 per possible immigrant.
Currently, the Border Patrol has 9,000 agents stationed on the Mexican border. The reality is that the border patrol only patrols about 50 miles out of the 2,000 miles of border with Mexico. To patrol those 50 miles, will cost us $6.7 billion in 2006. So my numbers are probably very very low, but even so, just put to up a fence and man it at a minimal level would more then double the cost of the border patrol.
On the other hand if the 5 million people who cross the Mexican border generated $2500 in taxes instead of having to pay $2500 criminals to cross the border that would be $12.5 billion dollars in additional revenue to the government.
Like I said, if you don’t live in a border state, kindly shut up.
Comments (4)
For whatever reason, the trackback doesn’t seem to be going through. Sorry.
Posted by William Teach | May 10, 2005 5:19 AM
Posted on May 10, 2005 05:19
Hmmmm,
You seem to think $9.9 billion is a lot of money (and by paying fence sitters $100 grand a year, I guess it is. Typical guards get about $40 grand a year on average).
But last year, the federal budget was $2.2 TRILLION.
So, $9.9 billion is peanuts, in the grand scheme of things.
The federal government spends a quarter of a billion on the B1 bomber. I say the B1 bomber. My mistake. I should say that we spend that much on just A SINGLE B1 bomber. They are $250 million EACH.
If we decided to just not build four of them this year (we can always build them next year), we’ve saved $1 billion that we could use for your fence.
Here’s another example. It costs $159.74 for the M1A1 Abrams tank to go a mile. Yep. That’s ONE … SINGLE … MILE.
So, for a billion dollars, we can drive just about 6.2 million tank-miles. If we just drive these tanks around less, there’s HALF A BILLION right there.
Thanks for showing everyone just how inexpensive it would be to secure our southern border.
I say let’s spend an extra billion and make the fence 20 feet high. The added cost of the morter and bricks would be trivial.
Posted by RightNumberOne | May 11, 2005 11:39 AM
Posted on May 11, 2005 11:39
In anticipation that you’re going to argue with my math, let me just throw this out to make my point crystal clear.
Today, the US Senate voted 100-0 to send $85 Billion more dollars to Iraq.
What are they going to use it for? Well, according to the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the border posts in Iraq need rebuilding.
Purpose: Keep out illegal immigrants.
Hmmmmm … seems like a good idea to me.
“We now have to rebuild Iraq’s strength,” said Anton Datillo, construction manager for a sector under the Corps’ Southern District.
“Datillo cited the border post project as an example of the first step to protecting the country from the influx of insurgents. About 94 border posts are either under construction or complete, he said, explaining that construction continues on Iraq’s borders with Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in the south.”
Read the whole thing here: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2004/12/mil-041202-arnews01.htm
Oh, and welcome to the Reality-Based Community!
Posted by RightNumberOne | May 11, 2005 11:50 AM
Posted on May 11, 2005 11:50
If you’ve ever owned dogs, you’ll know that fences won’t work. If they want to get through, they will.
I was just making the point that 2000 miles is a lot of border, and it’s costing us $6.7 billion to guard 50 miles of it. If we extrapolate, that would be $268 billion extra. So closing the border isn’t going to happen.
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May 20, 2005 7:52 AM
Posted on May 20, 2005 07:52