Trump wants $18B over the next decade to build some new border wall and reinforce old walls. CBP wants funding for additional agents and equipment, bringing the total to $33B. ICE wants to add 10k more agents as well, which has to cost at least $1-2B per year. Grand total: about $50B in the next 10 years.
After all that money is spent, there will still be half a US-Mexico border sitting naked. We'd need to then spend the same money again, two or three times over. While a few areas don't need a wall, most does.
There is a lot of debate about how much illegal immigrants cost the country. High estimates touted by Trump and Fox personalities claim $113B per year, but this has been rated mostly false by Politifact. I don't entirely understand how these numbers are computed, but the CBO's assessment is that "in aggregate and over the long term, tax revenues of all types generated by immigrants—both legal and unauthorized—exceed the cost of the services they use". This may include the general economic activity generated, though it sounds like a direct comparison of just net tax dollar flow. Either way, if the reality is that illegal immigrants are revenue-neutral, then spending money to keep them out is bad financial business. Consider also that illegals interact with legal businesses and generate revenue for those as well (they eat, they live places, they need clothes, tools, cars, ...).
The effort to keep them out becomes a moral question, but even there it can't be assessed in a vacuum. We must compare what else we could do with the money. $5B could cover ongoing health care for 500k people. Or a yearly $150 tax break for the bottom 10%. Or a $1500 raise for every teacher. Or installing 1500 new wind turbines a year that will offset fossil fuel energy used by about a million people. Or a full-ride state university scholarship for 100k students per year. It could be an investment in our own people. And consider that even a perfect wall would only keep out half the illegal immigration (the other half enter legally, then overstay visas).
After all that money is spent, there will still be half a US-Mexico border sitting naked. We'd need to then spend the same money again, two or three times over. While a few areas don't need a wall, most does.
There is a lot of debate about how much illegal immigrants cost the country. High estimates touted by Trump and Fox personalities claim $113B per year, but this has been rated mostly false by Politifact. I don't entirely understand how these numbers are computed, but the CBO's assessment is that "in aggregate and over the long term, tax revenues of all types generated by immigrants—both legal and unauthorized—exceed the cost of the services they use". This may include the general economic activity generated, though it sounds like a direct comparison of just net tax dollar flow. Either way, if the reality is that illegal immigrants are revenue-neutral, then spending money to keep them out is bad financial business. Consider also that illegals interact with legal businesses and generate revenue for those as well (they eat, they live places, they need clothes, tools, cars, ...).
The effort to keep them out becomes a moral question, but even there it can't be assessed in a vacuum. We must compare what else we could do with the money. $5B could cover ongoing health care for 500k people. Or a yearly $150 tax break for the bottom 10%. Or a $1500 raise for every teacher. Or installing 1500 new wind turbines a year that will offset fossil fuel energy used by about a million people. Or a full-ride state university scholarship for 100k students per year. It could be an investment in our own people. And consider that even a perfect wall would only keep out half the illegal immigration (the other half enter legally, then overstay visas).
The common line is that being anti-wall is the same as wanting weak borders. No one is saying we should promote illegal immigration, but we have to consider the cost-benefit or the morality here. In either case, it seems more prudent to spend the money on something else. Anything else.
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