Quote:
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Originally Posted by Tucson Weekly
Enforcement advocates point to the San Diego fence, saying it has been a rousing success in cutting crossings from Tijuana, and resulting crime in San Diego. But as The Washington Post reported, it took $39 million to build the first 9 miles. After invoking their authority to override environmental concerns, the DHS got an additional $35 million to finish the remaining 3.5 miles. Total cost? $74 million--more than $5 million a mile. And what did the San Diego fence do? It moved the illegals over to Arizona. Is that the definition of "working"?
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I admit that I have no idea if the above numbers are accurate; but for sake of discussion, I will assume that they are. So this is the way it hashes out:
A total of $74 million divided by 12.5 miles works out to $5.92 million per mile--for most of us, a lot of money; but for the US government, not so much.
Multiplied by 1,950 miles, however, the grand total comes to $11.544 billion--some pretty serious money, for anyone this side of Bill Gates (or at least Michael Dell); but still not a prohibitive amount for the US government. So the real question becomes: Is it worth the investment?
Assuming, for the moment, that it could work--and, unlike the case of the San Diego wall that just sent illegals fleeing to Arizona, there would be no place left to go--it strikes me as impossible to put a price upon our national sovereignty. And absent an effective barrier to
illegal entry into this country (I would emphasize that
legal immigration can be a very good thing), we can have no national sovereignty, in any meaningful sense of the word.
So yes, I believe our spending 11 1/2 billion dollars (or even a bit more, if there are the usual cost overruns--and, of course, normal inflation) would be well worth it, in order to preserve the integrity of our borders--and, attendantly, the integrity of the American nation.