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Trump has been repining about his wall for, what, three years now. Why? Because it's politically expedient for him to do so, for among his benighted base, it's galvanizing and because for him it's a matter of ego, looking tough. He said he'd build a beautiful wall; laughable as it was, he referenced his experience in real estate as a basis for his knowing how to build a wall; he said Mexico would pay for his wall; and he led stadium-sized throngs of nitwits (they lacked the sense to know it wasn't doable "from jump") in "build the wall" and "Mexico's going to pay for it" chants.
How do we know that the wall is about politics, about having a rallying/talking point, and that increasing border security is sought not seminally but only ostensibly?
How do we know that the wall is about politics, about having a rallying/talking point, and that increasing border security is sought not seminally but only ostensibly?
- Because at the start of the year, Trump turned down a chance to get $25 billion for his border wall and he later lobbied against a bill providing deportation protections for young undocumented immigrants and $25 billion in border wall funding because he wanted cuts to legal immigration as well.
- Jan. 2018 --> How Democrats Stopped Worrying and Learned to Accept Trump's Wall
- Feb 15, 2018 --> Senate rejects bill offering $25B for wall
That was two $25B opportunities to get Trump his wall in less than a month and Trump/Congressional Republicans abjured both. Why did they reject the bills? Because to get the $25, Trump/GOP-ers had to agree to a path to citizenship for the ~700K DACA people....As if those folks had anything to do with wall's imagined or realizable border security returns....They're already here. No wall isn't going to stop them from entering the US.
- Because illegal immigration has been declining steadily for about a decade and even the CBP's data shows so.
- in 2017, border arrests had dropped to a historic low; to find a year with fewer border arrests, you have to go back all the way to 1971.
- September 2017 DHS report noted that “the southwest land border is more difficult to illegally cross today than ever before.”
- Border Crossings Have Been Declining for Years, Despite Claims of a ‘Crisis of Illegal Immigration’
- Is the US in an 'illegal' immigration crisis? Border patrol data suggests otherwise
- Because nobody who wants the wall has presented a methodologically sound economic case showing the wall is "worth it." How can one show the wall is economically worth it? Three steps:
- Show that southern-border illegal immigrants' demand function is (has been and will remain) quadratic or higher order and that:
- if quadratic, the minimum has been reached and can only be held thus by installing a wall
- if cubic or higher order, a local minimum has been reached and the curve minimum cannot be reached without the wall - Show that (A) the net economic impact (gains less costs) of installing and maintaining the wall bests (B) the net economic impact of not installing and maintaining the wall.
- FWIW, the CIS has already calculated B. (see note 1.)
- Produce a sound quantitative methodology for measuring the post installation realized net economic impact of installing the wall. (I asked wall advocates here for such a methodology; not one wall advocate -- the folks burdened with showing the performance of the wall -- presented one. I also haven't seen one from non-DP analysts, the closest being "quick and dirty" summary-level qualitative evaluation and others like it.)
- Show that southern-border illegal immigrants' demand function is (has been and will remain) quadratic or higher order and that:
- Because the Trump Administration was offered $1.6B for border security and won't accept it.
