[t]https://media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2017_43/2198741/171023-border-wall-prototypes-se-1130a_a70bd9c715ed978b7ac25fa022fd246c.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg[/t]
[quote]The eight prototypes are 18 to 30 feet tall. Half are concrete walls, and the other half is made from "other materials." In total, they cost taxpayers $2.4 million to $4 million.
They currently sit on federal land in San Diego, where the president is scheduled to stop on his California trip.
Several contractors were awarded $300,000 to $500,000 for each prototype, which were built last year to help guide construction.
Is there money to build it? No. At the beginning of the year, the Trump administration requested $18 billion over 10 years to construct roughly 700 miles of wall along the southern border, according to the Department of Homeland Security. (Internal DHS assessments suggest the cost could be higher — as much as $21 billion.) However, the request was rejected by Congress.
The president tweeted on Tuesday citing a study that he says calculated that the $18 billion cost of the wall will be paid for by itself.[/quote]
[url=https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-visits-california-see-wall-prototypes-near-mexico-border-n854836]NBC News[/url]
[media]https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/973580538358374402[/media]
...can't they just tunnel under it?
Is this clown going to use this PR stunt to leverage re-election by saying that's when he'll complete it?
Helpful reminder that the Center for Immigration Studies is a far-right think tank that has been calling for tighter border security for decades and was founded by a white nationalist.
[QUOTE=Alec W;53199409]Is this clown going to use this PR stunt to leverage re-election by saying that's when he'll complete it?[/QUOTE]
Absolutely, and people will fall for it.
I imagine taking Trump to one of these "Showcases". Then immediately surround him with the "Prototypes"
Hopefully a preview of what he'll be spending thr rest of his life starting at.
Will somebody please explain what a ladder is to Trump? He keeps talking about mountain climbers not being able to scale these mighty walls unassisted, as if people are going to try to climb up the side of the wall like a spider lol.
Honestly, though, even if they do succeed in creating an "unclimbable" wall, the best case scenario is that this just shifts the method and location of entry for illegal immigrants to weak points, coasts, tunnels, etc, which places [I]more[/I] power in the hands of cartel people-smuggler -- who already have a deadly grip on the movement of people across the border.
It will do absolutely [I]nothing[/I] to stem the flow of drugs or guns, which already cross the border via plane, boat, tunnel, catapult, submarine, balloon, ramp, and slingshot, to name just a few of the brilliantly simple and/or simply brilliant methods of drug and weapon smuggling.
Nobody fuckin' wins in this arrangement. We'll have an exorbitantly expensive wall whose maintenance and monitoring alone will present a logistical nightmare, and yet drugs and illegal immigrants will still be smuggled across the border, and all the problems in Mexico that lead to immigration and smuggling will only be made [I]worse[/I].
has any democrat campaigned in front of them yet?
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/kIpr9XI.png[/IMG]
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;53199451]Will somebody please explain what a ladder is to Trump?[/QUOTE]
Luckily our "best" mind has already considered this at about 13:30
[video]https://youtu.be/vU8dCYocuyI?t=13m25s[/video]
[QUOTE=Alec W;53199409]Is this clown going to use this PR stunt to leverage re-election by saying that's when he'll complete it?[/QUOTE]
"I got rid of the mexicans! The russians are a small price to pay for it though."
Wow, what a coincidence that he cites an organization that has been labeled as a hate group for being racist and co-founded by white supremacist John Tanton, who supports eugenics to the point of also founding the Society for Genetic Education.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;53199451]Will somebody please explain what a ladder is to Trump? He keeps talking about mountain climbers not being able to scale these mighty walls unassisted, as if people are going to try to climb up the side of the wall like a spider lol.
Honestly, though, even if they do succeed in creating an "unclimbable" wall, the best case scenario is that this just shifts the method and location of entry for illegal immigrants to weak points, coasts, tunnels, etc, which places [I]more[/I] power in the hands of cartel people-smuggler -- who already have a deadly grip on the movement of people across the border.
It will do absolutely [I]nothing[/I] to stem the flow of drugs or guns, which already cross the border via plane, boat, tunnel, catapult, submarine, balloon, ramp, and slingshot, to name just a few of the brilliantly simple and/or simply brilliant methods of drug and weapon smuggling.
Nobody fuckin' wins in this arrangement. We'll have an exorbitantly expensive wall whose maintenance and monitoring alone will present a logistical nightmare, and yet drugs and illegal immigrants will still be smuggled across the border, and all the problems in Mexico that lead to immigration and smuggling will only be made [I]worse[/I].[/QUOTE]
Ok Señor Negativo you got a better solution. Or are you just going to complain and downplay anything this administration is trying to do. Oh wait I already know the answer to that. A wall will help. Might not be a be all end all but it will help. If the wall shifts migrant paths to weak points then you move to the weak points and catch them there. Also maintaining and monitoring won't be a logistical nightmare. There are already people patrolling the border, there will just be a big ass wall now. I really don't see why so many people are against secure borders.
[QUOTE=Snickerdoodle;53199549][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/kIpr9XI.png[/IMG][/QUOTE]
The wall because the people you are keeping out can't afford a plane ticket nor were they willing to go through the legal immigration process to get a visa in the first place.
[QUOTE=Sgt.Sgt;53199749]Ok Señor Negativo you got a better solution. Or are you just going to complain and downplay anything this administration is trying to do. Oh wait I already know the answer to that. A wall will help. Might not be a be all end all but it will help. If the wall shifts migrant paths to weak points then you move to the weak points and catch them there. Also maintaining and monitoring won't be a logistical nightmare. There are already people patrolling the border, there will just be a big ass wall now. I really don't see why so many people are against secure borders.
The wall because the people you are keeping out can't afford a plane ticket nor were they willing to go through the legal immigration process to get a visa in the first place.[/QUOTE]
A great big wall is literally the most costly and least effective way of securing a border. But I'm sure it'll all be worth after you spend billions of dollars and a decade building it, only for people to go around/over it. Unless you also think its effective to pay people to patrol every inch of the border constantly.
Maybe people will stop complaining about the administration when it comes up with ideas better than "I saw the great wall of china in Mulan thats cool why don't we have one of those?".
[QUOTE=RainbowStalin;53199760]A great big wall is literally the most costly and least effective way of securing a border. But I'm sure it'll all be worth after you spend billions of dollars and a decade building it, only for people to go around/over it. Unless you also think its effective to pay people to patrol every inch of the border constantly.
Maybe people will stop complaining about the administration when it comes up with ideas better than "I saw the great wall of china in Mulan thats cool why don't we have one of those?".[/QUOTE]
Do you have a better solution? Or even some ideas on how to deal with this problem.
[QUOTE=Sgt.Sgt;53199749]Ok Señor Negativo you got a better solution. Or are you just going to complain and downplay anything this administration is trying to do. Oh wait I already know the answer to that. A wall will help. Might not be a be all end all but it will help. If the wall shifts migrant paths to weak points then you move to the weak points and catch them there. Also maintaining and monitoring won't be a logistical nightmare. There are already people patrolling the border, there will just be a big ass wall now. I really don't see why so many people are against secure borders.
The wall because the people you are keeping out can't afford a plane ticket nor were they willing to go through the legal immigration process to get a visa in the first place.[/QUOTE]
The point you're missing is that most of the issue isn't stemming from people jumping the border and running north, but from immigrants who come to the US legally with a temp visa and just...stay.
Also, keep in mind, that cost is just to build the wall, think about the annual cost to maintain and service 700 miles of 30 foot high designer wall.
[QUOTE=Sgt.Sgt;53199774]Do you have a better solution? Or even some ideas on how to deal with this problem.[/QUOTE]
Frig quit your sealioning and actually read up on the issue.
[QUOTE=Sgt.Sgt;53199774]Do you have a better solution? Or even some ideas on how to deal with this problem.[/QUOTE]
Doing literally nothing would be a better solution than spending 18 billion dollars on building a monument that people can simply go around, under, or over. We can barely maintain our own roads properly, how in the fuck do you expect a massive concrete wall to be maintained and monitored for trespassing?
That's in excess of 18 billion dollars that could be invested in infrastructure that could actually be utilized like roads and bridges, money that could be invested in growing Mexico's economy and infrastructure (which would make them a more robust trade partner and also would give Mexicans less reason to leave Mexico or overstay Visas).
Accepting a wall [i]because it's something[/i] is an astronomically dangerous mindset to have. If you were sitting around bored and someone suggested you play Russian Roulette to tackle that boredom [i]because it's something[/i] you'd call them insane and not play Russian Roulette. Inaction itself is a decision, and making purposefully bad decisions just for the sake of saying you did something is laughably childish.
[QUOTE=Sgt.Sgt;53199774]Do you have a better solution? Or even some ideas on how to deal with this problem.[/QUOTE]
Isn't this what we elect policymakers for? I didn't realize our elected officials were supposed to be giving us the bottom of the barrel in terms of "well.. this is the best we came up with, a multi-billion dollar wall that will potentially decrease illegal immigration by 1% until someone in Mexico buys a ladder".
[editline]14th March 2018[/editline]
Like the above poster said, doing literally nothing would be better because at least then we wouldn't be spending a load of cash on a wall that will do very very nearly nothing.
You're not going to outsmart cartels with a wall. The only practical method that doesn't involve a literal war with them is to legalize and tax popular drugs similarly to nicotine and alcohol. Aside from more severe and harmful ones like cocaine, methadone, opiates and barbituates; most drugs at the damaging capacity of alcohol should be available to be legally obtained, owned and manufactured within the US.
You simultaneously use capitalism, avoid spending billions of taxpayer dollars on a feel-good measure and increase government revenue while keeping streets safer from having less individuals seeking the dangers of the black market. The war on drugs has been a disaster that did not heed the events of the prohibition era and has ruined countless lives. Heck, even grandfather nicotine and alcohol users into a drug license program over a transition period of 4 years and have people take a course elaborating on the effects and consequences of each drug (including alcohol and nicotine), like with how preparation is set up for a driving license. You could even potentially tie it into relating to drivers licenses and ban alcohol sales to a person that has committed DUI more than twice, helping to handle our lethal DUI issue in the process.
The wall is a waste of taxpayer dollars that is completely useless over the fact that you can't cover the entirety of the border [i]and[/i] expect people to not raft the gulf as refugees or penetrate it, directly. The cost of maintenance would also be incredibly high and would in no way pay for itself.
People already circumvent the fence that currently exists for over a thousand kilometers of the border, and that's not even the primary source of illegal immigrants at all despite [i]also[/i] costing billions to maintain. Billions of dollars would be wasted each decade on the wall and it'd all come out of taxpayer money, including the same taxpayers who whine about a few million being used to investigate Trump despite that in itself being dwarfed by the amount of money wasted on Trump's golfing and investigating Clinton for years.
I'd just use the money to give the border patrol a shitload of drones an choppers. Have the drones peep for suspicious activity/drug runners/whatever and then have the helicopters swoop and and get 'em. With 18 billion you could build a little chopper/drone outpost every few hundred miles in strategically placed locations. Also hire a ton more people to man them. You create a permanent jobs, you capture the baddies, and you don't have to build a giant concrete wall.
[QUOTE=Zakkshockv2;53199396]...can't they just tunnel under it?[/QUOTE]
Israel has a rather effective tunnelling detection system along the Gaza Strip, I'm sure they'd be willing to share the tech if asked. It's not that hard to counter.
[QUOTE=Zakkshockv2;53199396]...can't they just tunnel under it?[/QUOTE]
Or fly over it.
[QUOTE=Kecske;53199855]Israel has a rather effective tunnelling detection system along the Gaza Strip, I'm sure they'd be willing to share the tech if asked. It's not that hard to counter.[/QUOTE]
not that we don't already have one but it doesn't seem to be stopping the hamas space program from getting around either
[QUOTE=Kecske;53199855]Israel has a rather effective tunnel detection system along the Gaza Strip, I'm sure they'd be willing to share the tech if asked.[/QUOTE]
Okay, but that's another expense on top of the cost of the wall, especially because we'd be employing it over a much larger border than Israel's.
I can't imagine that building and maintaining a system like that over a 3000km+ border would be cost-effective in the slightest, especially when it's likely to be sabotaged repeatedly.
[QUOTE=Sgt.Sgt;53199749]Ok Señor Negativo you got a better solution. Or are you just going to complain and downplay anything this administration is trying to do. [/QUOTE]
Actually, yeah I'm okay with doing exactly that. It's not my responsibility to come up with a "better solution".
However, it is my and every other American's responsibility to call out these fucking insane scumbags in this administration and the people who support them.
Complaining is counter-productive? I disagree. Because the angrier people get over this stuff, the less complacent they're gonna be.
[QUOTE=Sgt.Sgt;53199749]Also maintaining and monitoring won't be a logistical nightmare.[/QUOTE]
This sounds uber-sarcastic, but I can tell based on the rest of your snarky overly optimistic fantasy-world post that it's not.
[quote]I really don't see why so many people are against secure borders.[/quote]
Because it's wholly unnecessary.
81.6% of crimes are committed by people who are non-Hispanic or Latino (and funnily enough, 70% of those are white people, maybe we should give them little personal walls, that'd be cute). ([url=https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/topic-pages/tables/table-21]1[/url])
It's estimated that 11.5 million of 2015's estimated 323 million U.S. residents were here illegally (that's a whole [I]3.6%![/I]) and 60% of the foreign-born population is in New York, California, Texas, and Florida combined, leaving only 40% for the entire rest of the United States. Foreign-born residents make up 13% of the population, so only 5.2% of the entirety of foreign-born residents reside somewhere other than those states. ([url=http://criminology.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264079-e-93]2[/url])
In conclusion, golly gee I'm sure glad we're going to spend 18 billion [url=https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/973580538358374402?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffacepunch.com%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D1595903%26p%3D53199394%23post53199394](3)[/url] on, even in your perfect world where every illegal immigrant is a rapist or murderer, reducing crime by [B]0.54[/B]% in one of [B]four[/B] states with even [B]less[/B] in every other part of the United States. You know what's even better? I'm not even factoring in that [B]half[/B] of all illegal immigrants moving into the U.S., get this, [B]aren't even Mexican![/B] ([url=http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/02/what-we-know-about-illegal-immigration-from-mexico/]4[/url])
I'd like to hear more about how this is a "problem" and how we should be "suggesting solutions" instead of bashing this stubborn-ass senile manbaby's terrible, useless idea that serves no real purpose and instead wastes the nations money all the while my district's schoolboard just authorized an indefinite walk-out by request of the superintendent because [B]we can't pay our motherfucking teachers[/B] but hey you know we can spend [B]18,000,000,000 dollars[/B] on a fucking waste-of-space wall that people like you defend despite not having a single fucking clue what the facts actually are.
[QUOTE=Sgt.Sgt;53199749]The wall because the people you are keeping out can't afford a plane ticket nor were they willing to go through the legal immigration process to get a visa in the first place.[/QUOTE]
Even though the number of [URL="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/visa-overstays-outnumber-illegal-border-crossings-trend-expected-continue-n730216"]overstayed visa illegals actually outnumber border crossing illegals[/URL]?
[QUOTE=Raidyr;53199418]Helpful reminder that the Center for Immigration Studies is a far-right think tank that has been calling for tighter border security for decades and was founded by a white nationalist.[/QUOTE]
Is it weird that I immediately thought something was off-putting about the name? It certainly didn't sound like anything official or within any official capacity [I]at all[/I].
[editline]13th March 2018[/editline]
Remember: China built a wall. A wall built at the cost of thousands and thousands of human lives, taking decades, and built good enough to STILL be mostly intact to this day despite being over 2000 years old.
It didn't work, either.
[editline]13th March 2018[/editline]
[QUOTE=OvB;53199835]I'd just use the money to give the border patrol a shitload of drones an choppers. Have the drones peep for suspicious activity/drug runners/whatever and then have the helicopters swoop and and get 'em. With 18 billion you could build a little chopper/drone outpost every few hundred miles in strategically placed locations. Also hire a ton more people to man them. You create a permanent jobs, you capture the baddies, and you don't have to build a giant concrete wall.[/QUOTE]
I honestly don't understand why they aren't using or even [I]suggesting[/I] drones along the border: They're fucking [I]perfect[/I] for the role. Long loiter time, remote operation, impressive sensor suites, etc.
I just hope they don't include Hellfires on them for border-duty...
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