The United States should build and maintain a border fence

Con's plan provides no serious check on terrorists Con's plan is to grant resident status to anyone who manages to cross the border illegally, with no penalty until after they break the law and are caught. There can be no background check until after they are caught. If a terrorist illegally crosses the border into the US right after completing a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan or Somalia, there are no grounds for deporting the terrorist, because he has not yet committed a crime in the US and is a citizen of where ever he was born. The terrorist is immediately eligible for citizenship under Pro's plan. We should therefore expect large numbers of jihadists, financed by Iran and radical elements in Saudi Arabia, for example, to take residence. Under Con's plan, immigration is limited only by the number of people who can cross the border, and the plan proposes no improvement in border security. Last year, 356,873 illegal immigrants crossing the border were apprehended by the border patrol. [13. http://tinyurl.com...] The best estimate is that about half of the illegal entrants are caught. [14. http://tinyurl.com...] That means there are about 750,000 people each year who can immediately become residents with be subject subject to being deported. Mexico and Central America has severe economic and social problems. So long as the US has a better economy, people will seek to migrate. Poor countries support illegal immigration into the U.S. According to the former president of Mexico, [15. http://legacy.utsandiego.com...] Cuba attempted to push criminals and the mentally ill into the US. Terrorist and criminals are unchecked after crimes are committed. Con's plan does not seriously address any of the reasons I cited in 1.2 through 1.8. These are the conventional reasons why virtually every democratic country wants secure borders. A border that allows 750,000 people to cross each year and uncounted tons of contraband clearly does not have secure borders. Illegal immigration has high costs, not legal immigration Con cites a study that immigration as a whole is net benefit. Immigration comprises the legal high-skill high-pay technical workers admitted under H-1B visas, and low-skilled low-paid illegal immigrants. There are not many immigrants in the middle, so illegal immigration is contributing to increasing wage disparity. Con's source evaluates immigration as whole and claims a net financial benefit. That's irrelevant to the present debate, which is about the costs of the illegal population. If it were true that the lowest-paid segment of the population paid more in taxes than they got in services, then every branch of government would be running surpluses without any need for progressive taxation. In fact, the top earners are paying most of the taxes. Con claims that FAIR is racist and, preposterously, so is Fox News. We actually don't need to know the motives of collecting data on immigration costs, because the tally of costs exists independent of the reason for compiling it. The FAIR analysis of costs [16. http://www.fairus.org...] provides references to original sources in government. The amounts paid in taxes is deducted from the total cost. Many of the costs are undeniable. For example, free medical care is provided by emergency rooms. The education of illegal immigrant children is expensive, and would be avoided with a guest worker program that allowed seasonal workers to leave their families in their home countries. There is no doubt of the cost of keeping a prison population due to allowing immigration without background checks prior to admission. To justify a border fence only $1.1 billion of the $113 billion need be proved. A border fence is relatively cheap The construction cost of the fence is the fence is $16 billion, using very pessimistic numbers. The fence lasts 20 years, again, a very conservative number, so the amortized construction cost is $0.8 billion. To that maintenance and operational costs of $0.3 billion per year are added. That ratio of construction to maintenance costs are about what the Israelis have experienced, and they are consistent with what Governor Perry claims in opposing the fence. Con errs in asserting that construction costs are in addition to $1.1 billion per year. Those costs are included. If illegal immigrants are prevented from entering at the border, there is much less need to catch them, house them, and carry out deportation. The cost of deporting an immigrant is $12,500, for a total cost of $5 billion per year. [17. http://goo.gl...] So if the fence reduced the influx by as little as 25%, the fence would be paid for entirely within the DHS budget. Improved security justifies a fence Con argues that a border fence will not improve security because there are alternate routes. That logic is fundamentally flawed. It implies that there is no point in taking any security measures whatsoever, because no matter what is done there will always be alternatives. We should minimize the chances of a successful terrorist attack, contraband, and illegal immigration. Border control allows the government to set policy on who and what comes into the United States. For example, if border security reduces the odds of a successful terrorist attack from from 1 in 20 to 1 in 40, then the measure is justified. The 9/11 attack cost the country about $100 billion dollars plus 3000 lives. Cutting the frequency of 9/11-scale attacks from 1 every 20 years to 1 in every 40 years saves an average of $2.5 billion per year. The reason there is only 700 miles of fencing proposed is that other areas of the border pose natural obstacles, mainly canyons and the Rio Grande. The river causes a delay in crossing the border, so there is time for the Border Patrol to react to sensor data and respond. There is no point in building a fence on the bluff atop a steep canyon wall, because the climb down into the canyon and up the other side provides enough delay for border patrol agents to respond to sensors that detect the activity. There must be a road, but a double fence is unnecessary. Contraband is stopped 17 million pounds of marijuana alone were seized on the Mexican border over a six year period. [18. http://tinyurl.com...] The contraband could be anything from which there is an illegal profit, including WMDs. Securing the border channels good through legal ports of entry so the Customs and Border Protection Service can check it. The service also monitors agricultural products. They guard against agro-terrorism, the deliberate introduction of plant pests and diseases to cripple domestic agriculture. [19. http://tinyurl.com...] The fence can be run around Native American lands One solution to these objections is to provide monitored gates through the fence. Interstate highways divide land all over the U.S., making it only possible to cross over the highway at a relatively few places where overpasses are built. However, if the tribe insists that they believe a fence is less desirable than stopping illegal activities from the border, then in each case the border fence can be run around the northern perimeter of the tribal lands. The ports of entry would then be between the tribal lands and the United States. Wildlife crossings work well Highways, train right-of-ways, and canals interfere with the migration of species as much or more than a border fence. The solution is to provide a path, usually through a tunnel, for animals to cross the obstruction. The species in question are small enough to traverse tunnels too small for humans. For a large species, sensors could monitor the tunnel and a gate closed if there were people using the tunnel. Wikipedia has a long article on the implementation of wildlife crossings. [20. http://en.wikipedia.org...] Water Water can pass through an array of stacked pipes that would keep out people.