To begin with: how much will Trump’s wall cost to build?
In her informative piece, statistician Liberty Vittert estimates that Trump’s wall will cost some $25 billion to build. Vittert breaks her estimate down as follows:
Size of the wall: 1,150 miles long; 40 feet high; 10 feet deep into the ground; 1 foot wide
Total volume of material: 11.2 million cubic yards
Materials: Approximately $8.7 billion in concrete (97 percent of the materials); approximately $3.6 billion in steel (3 percent of the materials)
Labor: Approximately $12.3 billion (given the labor costs on the original 654 miles of barriers we can assume a conservative 1:1 ratio of materials to labor)
Land acquisition: About 60 percent of the border is privately owned land. While the federal government has the power to take privately owned property for public purposes, it must provide “just compensation.” Based on previous purchases from the 2006-2009 wall construction, the cost at most would be $300,000 per mile acquired, or approximately $200 million altogether.
In total, the actual physical cost of the wall would be about $25 billion...
Illegal aliens cause economic harm to Americans because they consume far more in government services than they contribute in taxes. We make: they take.
According to a 2017 report from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), illegal aliens and their children cost American taxpayers $135 billion annually—$8,075 per alien per year. These costs are partially offset by taxes collected from illegal aliens, which total around $19 billion. Thus, the net cost of illegal immigrants to American taxpayers is $116 billion annually...
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
