A Border Fence for the US

In appreciation of home grown initiatives, I first decided to take a look at the Yuma Border Fence, a stretch of about 126 miles staffed with nearly one thousand agents. (1) For the time being, lets ignore the article’s overview of the border fence and cost, and look again at aggregate numbers: 1000 agents with low median salary of 40K. That comes to approximately $40,000,000 in salary, for 126 miles, give or take, for 6% of the total border. It would seem my initial staffing guestimation is off by a lot, instead of 14 billion, trained agents can get the job done across the entirety of the border for 634 million per year in salary, still have yet to discuss equipment and outpost position. Were “The Israel fence costed around 1.8 Million per mile which with a fence of around 2,000 miles would come in at a rough estimate of 3.6 billion dollars” to hold true, we have an initial start up cost, thus far, of 4.2 billion dollars. On the matter of Israel’s success, there is a key component this is being overlooked: the construction of their border fence also involved incursions into hostile territory to find militants, and negotiated peace talks between two (effectively) warring countries. Comparison between the two (US/Israel) is not quite apples and oranges, but is very far apart indeed in the reasons for what mitigates who comes across the border and for what reasons. While I don’t mind using cost basis as something relevant to the discussion since it’s a hard number for a construction, I do find it interesting that both military action and “diplomacy” was also given credit as a major driver in the reduction of Palestinian attacks. “a 2006 report by the Shin Beit concluded that "[t]he fence does make it harder for them [terrorists]" but that attacks in 2005 decreased due to increased pursuing of Palestinian militants by the Israeli army and intelligence organizations, Hamas's increased political activity, and a truce among Palestinian militant groups in the Palestinian Territories”. (2)Regarding what represents America’s best interests, an amnesty is of no large help either. The Heritage Foundation indeed has quite a bit to say about it, and going over the finer points would chew up a character count (and no doubt bore the audience) to an obscene degree. I will supply the conclusion from the study, though, as cited from The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer (3). “Current immigration practices, both lawful and unlawful, operate like a system of transnational welfare outreach, bringing millions of fiscally dependent individuals into the U.S. This policy needs to be changed. U.S. immigration policy should encourage high-skill immigration and strictly limit low-skill immigration. In general, government policy should limit immigration to those who will be net fiscal contributors, avoiding those who will increase poverty and impose new costs on overburdened U.S. taxpayers.”I fail to see how “Amnesty” could factor into America’s best interests with that dire of a prospect. The flow of immigrants needs to be cut off at the source: unlike Palestinian militants Mexican immigrants are coming here for ‘under the table’ jobs, or fraudulently received government aid. Cut this out. Rather than slapping down the immigrant, we should diplomatically engage Mexico to take responsibility for getting their nationals back, concentrate on getting them out once found (through better investigation of fraud), and most importantly make hiring an illegal immigrant a fiscal risk no employer wants to assume. (1) http://cronkitenewsonline.com...(2) https://en.wikipedia.org...(3) http://www.heritage.org...