by Spencer P Morrison, NEE
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From Do the Math:
Walls work. Everyone knows this. It’s why we build them around prisons, military installations, and even our homes without hesitation. The confusion sets in when we talk about big walls. Well, I have news for you: big walls work too.
For example, in 2006 Congress passed the Secure Fence Act which required the construction of 850 miles of double-layered fencing to be built on the Mexican-American border. Although the Bush administration only completed 36.6 miles of said fencing (at Yuma) before Obama gutted the project, the results are telling. Between 2006 and 2015 border apprehensions at Yuma declined by 96 percent, falling from 138,438 to just 5,902. While I do not doubt that many migrants simply used other routes to enter America, this proves the point: walls and fences are powerful deterrents.
These findings are supported by a report released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The report found that while the average interdiction rate along the U.S.-Mexican border is 50 percent, it was as low as just 5 percent in areas without fencing or vehicle barriers. Basically, walls and fences are a significant force multiplier for America’s border patrol agents—they delay migrants long enough for the authorities to apprehend them. They give America the edge in the endless game of “red rover” they currently play with migrants.
There is plenty of international evidence that walls work. For example, Hungary has claimed that fences along its borders with Croatia and Serbia have stemmed the flow of migrants by 99.7 percent since 2015. Specifically, “the number of successful attempts to illegally cross the border fell from 391,000 in 2015 to 18,236 in 2016 and only 1,184 in 2017” according to Gyorgy Bakondi, the Hungarian prime minister’s chief security advisor. Neighboring Austria refused to build a fence, and now their nation’s social services are being abused by migrants to a terminal degree.
Finally, even left-leaning Politico was forced to admit that walls are effective. Specifically, it found that the construction of a 150-mile long border wall between Israel and Egypt cut the number of illegal border crossings from 16,000 in 2011 to less than 20 in 2016. Basically, Israel’s wall was 100 percent effective.
America could build a highly-effective border wall for some $25 billion. Meanwhile, illegal aliens cost Americans $165 billion worth of taxes and remittances every year. Do the math.