Put up or shut up: Questions for advocates of completing a wall on the US southern border

[jnug]

Walls work and it's been proved over and over across the world.


San Diego Fence Provides Lessons in Border Control

April 6, 2006

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5323928

Before the fence was built, all that separated that stretch of Mexico from California was a single strand of cable that demarcated the international border.

Back then, Border Patrol agent Jim Henry says he was overwhelmed by the stream of immigrants who crossed into the United States illegally just in that sector.

"It was an area that was out of control," Henry says. "There were over 100,000 aliens crossing through this area a year."

Today, Henry is assistant chief of the Border Patrol's San Diego sector. He says apprehensions here are down 95 percent, from 100,000 a year to 5,000 a year, largely because the single strand of cable marking the border was replaced by double -- and in some places, triple -- fencing.

The first fence, 10 feet high, is made of welded metal panels. The second fence, 15 feet high, consists of steel mesh, and the top is angled inward to make it harder to climb over. Finally, in high-traffic areas, there's also a smaller chain-link fence. In between the two main fences is 150 feet of "no man's land," an area that the Border Patrol sweeps with flood lights and trucks, and soon, surveillance cameras.

"Here in San Diego, we have proven that the border infrastructure system does indeed work," Henry says. "It is highly effective."

Urban areas or even near Urban areas do not present the same sorts of border issues that the bulk of our Southern Border presents. Nobody argues that physical barrier in the right places and integrated into a total system makes sense. 1,100 new miles of physical barrier doesn't.

 

[Xelor]

Wall or artistic "steel slat barrier," whichever it be, I'm merely seeking folks' answers to the questions in the OP.
-- Xelor

You're not going to get that because they haven't thought about it.....

So you think they haven't actually thought about how to measure whether, after its erection, the wall is or isn't successful in impeding illegal immigration. Perhaps you're right -- given the absence of so much as one member here presenting one sound methodology and the rationale for its soundness, it currently appears you are right.

Now here's the thing: If they've not actually put any thought into how to tell whether, post deployment, the wall is achieving its intended outcomes and to what extent, if any, it is, what makes such individuals worthy of being heard, let alone heeded, when they try to convince others that the wall is worth erecting?

Have you ever purchased something you thought'd be great for "this or that," only to later discover that it wasn't at all as great as you'd thought? Of course, you have; everyone has. And how do we know the item/process wasn't all we though it'd be? We have a methodology for measuring the item's/process' performance.

Naturally, when the item/process isn't pricey, one may not, until sometime after buying it, develop a measurement methodology. It's a wholly different matter when millions or more dollars are on the line. For instance, when my partners and I sold projects that, in our business case, we asserted would yield "this or that" quantifiable outcome, the prospective clients demanded that our proposal delineate the methodology they and we would use to measure the implementation's success. The clients wanted the methodology because if they weren't happy with the outcome, that methodology would be the foundation from which they could haggle for a fee refund of some stripe. We wanted it too because we can use that methodology and the results our project yielded as a "qual"/reference when bidding for engagements with future clients.

If one -- Trump and other advocates (proposers) of building a wall -- thinks we and our clients didn't, well before we ever got close to proposal presentation, think about how to measure the performance of the endeavor on which we were proposing, well, one is just naive to what life is like in the "big leagues."

 

[Xelor]

Walls work and it's been proved over and over across the world.


San Diego Fence Provides Lessons in Border Control

April 6, 2006

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5323928

Before the fence was built, all that separated that stretch of Mexico from California was a single strand of cable that demarcated the international border.

Back then, Border Patrol agent Jim Henry says he was overwhelmed by the stream of immigrants who crossed into the United States illegally just in that sector.

"It was an area that was out of control," Henry says. "There were over 100,000 aliens crossing through this area a year."

Today, Henry is assistant chief of the Border Patrol's San Diego sector. He says apprehensions here are down 95 percent, from 100,000 a year to 5,000 a year, largely because the single strand of cable marking the border was replaced by double -- and in some places, triple -- fencing.

The first fence, 10 feet high, is made of welded metal panels. The second fence, 15 feet high, consists of steel mesh, and the top is angled inward to make it harder to climb over. Finally, in high-traffic areas, there's also a smaller chain-link fence. In between the two main fences is 150 feet of "no man's land," an area that the Border Patrol sweeps with flood lights and trucks, and soon, surveillance cameras.

"Here in San Diego, we have proven that the border infrastructure system does indeed work," Henry says. "It is highly effective."

That's not a methodology for determining whether the wall (or anything) is/was successful.

Today, Henry is assistant chief of the Border Patrol's San Diego sector. He says apprehensions here are down 95 percent, from 100,000 a year to 5,000 a year, largely because the single strand of cable marking the border was replaced by double -- and in some places, triple -- fencing.

That's still not a methodology for determining whether the wall (or anything) is/was successful.

 

[jnug]

Questions for wall advocates:

If be built a border wall (or fencing) that makes continuous the man-made physical barrier on the US' southern border​

• 
  [*=1]What is your methodology for determining whether that wall was successful?
  • 
    [*=1]What's your quantitative measure of success for the wall?
    • 
      [*=1]How will you calculate the wall's performance?
    [*=1]What's the net ROI -- in dollars and in terms of a ratio -- associated with your cost-benefit calculations?
  [*=1]What is the rationale that makes your methodology sound?

​

I admire your effort but you are asking questions of people that are clueless of anything that remotely resembles any sort of process, much less a governmental process.

The actual process for doing what Trump wants to do is to make a formal proposal to Congress and for Congress to determine what of it they want to fund.

This particular process got immediately off on the wrong foot when Trump decided that he would offer DACA for his indeterminate Wall as long as the Dems also swallowed Steven Miller's draconian Immigration policy changes. While that is a pretty halfassed excuse for a process, it was as it turns out the best shot Trump had at his wall. If he had just left out Miller's BS he would have had his wall though it was insane of Schumer to play along for as long as he did at the time.

So this is the process we have now:
- the administration has STILL not taken the completed review and recommendations from DHS and made them the foundation for a proposal to Congress. That review is still two years in working through DHS.
- has not stopped Trump yammering about his Wall regardless of not having an actual proposal to lay on the table
- the remainder of the "process" appears to be:
1) Trump rails
2) Trump talks to Ryan/McConnell and flips
3) Trump talks to Pelosi/Schumer flips again, railing a bit more, sticking foot way down his own throat
4) Trump talks to Ryan/ McConnell and flips again, prepared to sign a CR
5) Trump talks to Limbaugh and flips again, rails a bit more, throws temper tantrum and throws his rattles around his playpen
6) Trump talks to I don't know who at this point...maybe Melania will come in wearing Donald's favorite Mistress Melania outfit, rap him on the knuckles causing yet another flip

And his loyal horde thinks this is how things are supposed to work, that something positive will come out of this mess.

Cuckoo.....Cuckoo....Cuckoo

Like I said, I admire your effort. But I think you have a dog that just won't hunt.

 

[Gaugingcatenate]

A wall won't matter unless it's properly enforced. That only works in a few places (ie, NK/SK; Israel/Gaza) and even then, you get tunnels under one of the two. It's simply not feasible to do that along the entire US-Mexico border, especially given the terrain. (Indeed, it's not feasible to have wall on all of the terrain).

Otherwise, there are ropes, ladders, tunnels, oh right and BOATS. So we'd also have to wall off the coastline for quite a distance. But wait.... couldn't they just pay smugglers to take them farther out into the gulf or up the pacific?





Yeah. Not gonna happen. The wall won't work. The wall won't be built. That's why people pretend to want it.








You're not going to get that because they haven't thought about it. They don't have to. They know they're not getting their big stupid ****ing wall. They also know that if the spending isn't there for the wall, it could never possibly be there for the massive recruitment, infrastructure/supply-chain, and more that would be required to police the wall in such a way that technology from thousands of years ago won't defeat it (ropes, shovels, ladders, and the dreaded Drug Catapult).

If any wall-supporter actually tried to honestly think about it, they would see that it might be just about the dumbest possible way of addressing illegal immigration, second only to the idea of locking them all up for deportation proceedings than deporting them (and by that I mean, look at what it cost - including sunk costs of doing stuff like building prisons - to keep 2.3 million Americans in jail. Now extrapolate to keeping another 8-15 million illegals in jail for a few years, or more likely decades, as all those cases churn through the courts PLUS the cost of deporting (bussing/planes/ships/etc)).

There are sensible ways to approach this but they'll never be talked about. Illegal immigration is the perfect tool used to attack the left, which apart from a few on the very farthest fringes do not want literal "open borders" will oppose an idiotic expensive idea like a wall. So they can demand the wall knowing their idea will never be tested in practice and they can attack "the left" for opposing it. It's a WIN-WIN for them.




They lie.

So if our smarter more determined and obviously more patriotic team does get the wall in with this effort to protect ALL Americans [even the haughty and not so bright ones]...

Are you then gonna change that to... "We lie"?

 

[Gaugingcatenate]

That's still not a methodology for determining whether the wall (or anything) is/was successful.

If apprehensions are down 95,000 per year in just that one border crossing...at the rate of $70,000 cost to the system per illegal immigrant saved per year... by my calculator that comes to be: $6,650,000,000.

https://www.oann.com/each-illegal-i...ing-to-center-for-immigration-studies-report/

That is just in the one place. I am guessing that is just too much common sense to make a dent in the one known impenetrable wall, the minds of lefties.