I think you mean a 21 foot ladder.
All of those methods require time and resources to put in place. Even if/when these are used, a wall gives border patrol agents a chance to intervene.
Oops, yeah, 20-foot wall, 21-foot ladder. I don't know why I made this weird mistake when I typed my post. Thanks for letting me know.
My point is, regardless of time and resources, they will keep coming, as numerous as the jobs that are offered. Those jobs won't go unfilled, there will be always someone to take them. A wall will inconvenience them, sure, and they'll have to pay more money to the people smugglers who will get them through with the more creative methods, but they will keep coming. And the only study done to address the issue found that 50% of them come through legal entry points. What a wall will accomplish, is that a larger percentage of them will shift to the legal entry points, say 75%, and 25% of them will use the creative methods I've mentioned. But I'd be surprised if a wall actually has the power to decrease the number of illegal immigrants, by any significant degree.
The ONLY way to really stop illegal immigration is to stop offering jobs to illegal immigrants. We don't have a wall, but the lowest point of illegal immigration, with even a reversal, with more people leaving than coming in, coincided with our economic crisis when jobs became rare.
I'm very much against illegal immigration, and when I say so about a wall, I'm not being partisan. I'm just being logical. I want the best use of resources that can effectively dry out illegal immigration, and in my opinion, the best method is to focus on the job offers.
Focusing on physical barriers will just be an incentive for the people smugglers to further invest in more creative methods, and it will be worth their effort, because prices for their services will go up. But whether a Mexican prospective illegal immigrant pays $1,000 to a people smuggler or $2,000, it's irrelevant for us, Americans. That illegal alien will still come to our country, or if he can't afford it and won't come, someone else who can afford it will come in his place.
But if there are no jobs, why in the hell would they come? Those are economic migrants. They don't come because they love our hamburgers or the NFL. They come because they want the jobs. So it stands to logic that the attacking point to deal with the problem, is the job side of the equation.
The moment we seriously enforce our labor laws, with stiff penalties including cancellation of business license, disabling fines (of the going-out-of-business kind), and mandatory prison sentences for the CEOs and owners of the construction, hospitality, and farming companies that offer illegal jobs to these people, illegal immigration will come to a screeching halt.
If billions need to be spent, I'd rather spend them dramatically increasing the capability of the Labor Department to enforce existing laws, and lobbying Congress to pass more laws making the penalties for the illegal job offers much more impressive.
We hear of raids to arrest illegal workers. We rarely - if ever - hear of the business owner who offered the jobs being thrown in jail.
Like I said, if money is well spent doing what I'm suggesting, and once it is fully accomplished, there is still money left for a wall, then by all means, let's build the wall. But primarily and firstly, I'd invest in curtailing the illegal job offers.