Here are 9 things that could happen if Trump
builds “The wall!”
9 - The Wall becomes a tourist attraction
According to Donald Trump, the wall will be
at least 35 feet tall and 2,000 miles long.
That’s not nearly as long as the Great Wall
of China, which is 13,000 miles, but it would
be higher.
The Great Wall was only 26 feet tall at its
highest points, a good 10 feet shorter than
the Trump Wall.
And still, it’s one of the great tourist
attractions of China.
Another popular wall- turned-attraction was
the Berlin Wall, which was around 12 feet
tall and ran about 66 miles.
Anytime you build something so massive, people
are going to want to get a look at it.
Two things that make the Berlin Wall and the
Great Wall of China better tourist attractions
are their accessibility.
You can walk on the Great Wall, and West Berliners
could walk right up to the Berlin Wall and
paint on it.
That might not be the case for the Trump wall.
Americans may be able to get close, but they
sure won’t get to walk on it.
Although, with the cost of maintaining the
wall, Customs and Border Protection may start
offering paid tours.
In areas like Tijuana the wall will go through
urban areas.
Right now there’s an ugly corrugated metal
wall, but a shiny concrete wall might attract
the kind of artists that decorated the Berlin
Wall, maybe on both sides.
8 - The Wall goes way over budget
Trump estimated that the wall would cost anywhere
4 billion to 12 billion dollars; the numbers
keep changing.
Well, the wall will be 35 feet high and 2,000
miles long.
Building experts estimate 10 billion dollars
for the concrete panels, 5 billion for steel
columns to hold the panels (including labor)
and another 1 billion for concrete footings
and foundation.
That’s 16 billion dollars before taking
transportation costs into account.
You also have to build new roads to accommodate
trucks hauling concrete and steel to remote
desert areas.
Let’s say that costs 2 billion dollars.
Now add 30 percent for the management costs,
engineering, and design.
That makes 23.4 billion dollars if everything
goes according to budget.
Now, when’s the last time any major government
project came anywhere near the budget?
And that’s just building the wall.
It also has to be maintained.
The Congressional budget office estimates
the costs of maintaining the wall would exceed
the building costs in 7 years.
Oh, and you have to staff it.
Even with only one person per mile, that takes
2,000 officers per shift - all federal workers
with pensions and everything.
Whew.
7 - The Wall Only Stops Half
What do we mean when we stay it only stops
half?
Around half of the people that are in the
United States illegally came into the country
through an airport or official border crossing,
all perfectly legal.
They just didn’t leave when their thirty
day visa ran out.
A wall won’t stop these people.
Obviously, there’s no guarantee that a wall
would stop every illegal person coming from
Mexico either.
During the Cold War, over 1200 people directly
escaped East Germany every year, despite a
massive wall, shoot to kill orders, and a
secret service system keeping tabs on everybody
and their dog.
People are pretty ingenious, and if there’s
a will, there’s a way.
The sheer length of the US border will make
it hard to control the entire stretch, and
you can take a short boat trip around either
end.
And there are always tunnels.
Israel, another wall building nation, has
detected at least 30 tunnels under walls in
its Gaza strip.
Some of the tunnels have been miles long,
60 feet underground, and big enough to ride
a motorcycle through.
Hey, there may be job openings for Palestinian
tunnel diggers in Mexico!
6 - The Wall causes environmental change
The Rio Grande river forms the border between
Mexico and Texas.
The rest of the border runs over mountains
and through New Mexico and Arizona, and even
a city in California.
You can’t build a wall in a river or even
right next to one, because of erosion and
shifting soil.
So you have to move it away from the border,
like a lot of the border fences are now.
An actual wall would stop water from draining
into the river, which would cause floods along
the wall when it rains, and start drying up
the river.
Animals such as pronghorns and jaguars that
move back and forth to use the river would
be forced to come up with different migration
patterns.
When President George W. Bush put up fencing
along much of the border, Homeland Security
had to override over thirty environmental
protection statutes to get the job done, including
the endangered species act and the safe drinking
water act.
And that was just for a fence!
5 - The Wall makes Smugglers rich
Just like the best thing you can do for drug
cartels is make drugs harder to get and drive
up prices, a wall will have the same effect
on people smugglers, the Coyotes as they’re
called, who take money to guide people across
the border.
As crossing gets more complex, professionals
get more clients.
Coyotes and drug cartels that profit from
desperate would-be migrants are already using
the wall as a marketing tool, urging people
to act now before it’s too late.
And it’s working.
Prices are up and still going up, and attempts
to cross increased dramatically since the
election results of 2016.
But the coyotes know they’ll still have
a business after the wall goes up.
They’ll just be able to charge more, but
of course they’ll have to figure out new
ways to get around the wall.
4 - Illegal aliens build the wall
President Trump should call the Golden State
Fence Company in Riverside, California.
That company won a contract to build fences
on the US-Mexico border in 2001 and employed
750 employees at one point.
They had to change their name to Fenceworks
after they were busted several times for hiring
illegal immigrants - to build fences to keep
out illegal immigrants.
Why do companies in that part of the world
hire so many illegal immigrants?
Simple, they work for less and they’re available.
The US is going to have a hard time getting
enough people to work in in the remote places
where the wall will go up.
Most Americans don’t want to relocate to
a labor camp in the desert and slave in the
hot sun for minimum wage, which is exactly
what illegal immigrants are used to doing.
3 - The Wall helps the Mexican economy
One of the companies that may really profit
from the wall is Cemex.
Cemex is a Mexican cement company, the largest
in North and South America, with operations
on both sides of the border.
Cemex’s share price jumped 2.6 percent in
one day and its stock is up 18 percent since
news of the wall came out.
They and their workers stand to make a lot
of money on the wall construction, since no
American company is near their size and wouldn’t
be able to provide enough material in the
time needed to build the wall.
Grupo Cementos Chihuahua, another Mexican
construction company, is putting in bids to
build the wall, and looks to be very competitive.
Already, 70 percent of their business is with
US construction projects.
Other businesses that stand to profit are
naturally the people smugglers, spray paint
sellers, ladder makers, and dirt mover companies.
2 - Mexico doesn’t pay for the wall
President Trump has promised that Mexico will
pay for the wall.
His plan is to tell Mexico to pay for the
wall, and if they don’t, he’s going to
put a tax on money that Mexican workers in
the US send back to their families in Mexico.
Or, he’s going to raise tariffs on goods
coming from Mexico into the United States.
He says that the US imports more from Mexico
than they export, so that would be a good
way to balance that out.
Taxing money from Mexican workers and exports
means taking money from individual people
and businesses, and not actually getting the
Mexican government to pay for the wall, although
they’ll ultimately feel the loss.
But Trump also seems to suggest that Mexico
would pay for the wall straight up, just to
avoid those actions that he’s threatening
to do.
That’s not too likely.
Mexico has political parties that can’t
stand each other, just like in the United
States, but one thing they do agree on, is
that there is no way they’re going to pay
for a US wall.
It would be political suicide for any leader
in Mexico to agree to such a set-up.
What about raising border tariffs and stripping
away money from workers?
First of all, Trump can’t raise border tariffs.
He has to ask Congress to do that.
Would they?
Food prices would go up, a lot.
And if there is one thing Americans agree
on, it’s that they like to eat cheap food.
Congress might not want to go on record for
jacking up food prices.
Plus, a lot of agriculture in Mexico is owned
in part by American farm co-ops, who would
lose out if higher tariffs went into effect.
Those lobby groups have congressmen on their
speed dials, and they will be calling.
Now, the other point about taking away money
sent home to Mexico.
Most of those payments are made through Western
Union, but more and more are starting to go
through bitcoin and other digital currencies.
Not only is it cheaper to send money that
way, it’s also faster and would be almost
impossible for the US government to block.
There’s even a service that lets you send
money directly to ATMs in Mexico, where family
members can get it in pesos.
This trend will only accelerate if the US
puts fees in place.
If the fees were actually successful in siphoning
off money, Mexican workers, many of them legal,
might just go home, which would be a huge
blow to American agriculture, which is completely
dependent on Mexican labor.
Uh oh.
Food just got even more expensive.
1 - The wall never gets finished
Right now, President Trump is pushing the
wall, but big projects like that take time
to get started.
There’ll be an awful lot of planning involved,
contracts to draw up, roads to build, people
to hire, and so on.
Bottom line - it’s going to take a while
to get started and quite a while to finish.
It took over thirty years to complete the
first coast to coast interstate highway - I
80 from California to New Jersey, and that
was flat.
Of course, if the wall is a top priority it
will go faster, but it won’t get finished
in four years.
If Trump can stay in office that long, he
better get re-elected, or whoever comes after
him will likely but the kibosh on the wall.
That would leave an interesting, half-completed
ruin, like a pyramid standing in the desert.
Although nowhere near 
as amazing.
Here’s what’s next!
