United States-Mexico Border Fence

I sincerely apologize for my forfeit. I have been so busy these past few days, and next thing I know it, I get an email from Debate.org saying that I forfeited the debate! Once again, I apologize for that. I would like to now just say some things I guess. This is what my opponent stated: "I would like to remind my opponent that the previous round (round two) was ONLY for main arguments. His rebuttals should have been in this round. He should have the "conduct" points taken away from him in the votes due to him not following the debate structure I implemented. I would also like to apologize that the last MLA citation did not work properly. I do not know what happened and why." Firstly, I believe that it is wrong to accuse me of something, then on top of that say that I should have conduct points taken away. The voters decide this, not my opponent. Secondly, I apologize for including refutations in my main arguments. Where I'm from, we do it a bit differently. The first and second speaker provide refutations and emphasize our team's arguments, and third speaker, known as rebuttal, basically looks over the whole debate and points out meaningful things. So, I believe that conduct points should not be taken away since I am new to debate.org and still have to adjust to the debating style. Thirdly, I believe that my opponent is wrong because, as he indicated, the second round is for main arguments. According to dictionary.com, an argument is defined as "a discussion involving differing points of view; debate". What I did was provide a discussion, provide arguments and a debate, by refuting my opponent's points. I would finally like to point out that my opponent is using extremely large and obnoxious fonts for his titles, and is centering his text which, as the commenters have pointed out, is extremely hard to read. Since I apparently did the second round wrong, I will not provide any further refutations to try and make up for it. Instead, I will repeat my own points. Argument 1: I believe that we should keep the United States-Mexico border fence because of the money already invested on it. Since we have invested so much money, it is useless to spend more money and not get rid of it. My opponent is not looking at the price tag on his proposals. Just to build the border fence, it has already cost us $2.4 billion! (1) If we take it down, I assume it will cost millions more for the work force to tear it down plus the high tech equipment. Another price tag that he is not looking at is the security system he has proposed. This would cost billions of more dollars, all from the government out of our, the taxpayers, pockets! Therefore, the United States-Mexico border should not be built because it will financially impact the United States more than it already has. Argument 2: I believe that we should keep the United States-Mexico border because of the crime in Mexico that it can potentially keep out. In 2012 in the country of Mexico, there were 102,085 homicides in total. (2) Also, in Mexico, in the year of 2011, there were 12,358 drug-related murders in Mexico. (3) Do we want all of these criminals and crimes in our country in addition to the crime rates of the Untied States? I'd say no. MLA Citations: 1. Sais, Samantha. "Price Tag for 700 Miles of Border Fencing: High and Hard to Pin down." NBC News. NBC News, June 2013. Web. 24 Mar. 2014. <http://usnews.nbcnews.com......;. 2. Baker, James A. "Baker Institute Blog." Baker Institute Blog. Chron, 24 Oct. 2013. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. <http://blog.chron.com......;. 3. Wikipedia Contributors. "Crime in Mexico." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Mar. 2011. Web. 24 Mar. 2014. <http://en.wikipedia.org......;. Note: This is not unreliable. Information from source from the Reforma Ejecutometro. Even though I know I have lost this debate, I will persevere and make it to the end. I would like to thank my opponent for being a strong opponent as I have learned a lot so far. Good luck!