0.001 seems like quite a small number to me. Is there anyone who does not agree? This very small number, one-tenth of 1%, is what the present brouhaha over border wall funding would actually cost in terms of the annual budget. Is this worth not paying 800,000 federal workers for now going on 3+ weeks? President Trump spent the Christmas holiday in Washington D.C. (other than those days when he visited some U.S. troops in Iraq and Germany). Rep. Pelosi spent the Christmas holiday in Hawaii. Who wanted to negotiate? Hint: Not the one with the lei!
Ms. Pelosi has called the border wall immoral . . . well I think that it is immoral for her to continue her posturing while not paying these federal workers! If I were to ever have the misfortune of meeting Ms. Pelosi, I wold ask her if President Obama was acting immorally when he oversaw the construction of over 100 miles of fences and a wall in 2009.
Ms. Pelosi and Sen Schumer, as if reading from the same script, both called a wall “ineffective” and “expensive.” (It’s always nice when your talking points have been written by the same pen!) Nice to say that walls are “ineffective,” but what does history actually demonstrate? In places along the U.S.-Mexican border where a wall has been built, illegal border crossings have dropped dramatically. In San Diego, a decrease in illegal crossings of 92% since it was completed; in El Paso, a decrease of 95% in the 22 years since that Wall was built; in Tucson, a decrease of 90% in 15 years; in Yuma, a decrease of 95% in 9 years. Yes, Chuck and Nancy, if your barometer of success is set at 100%, then I suppose that 90-95% is “ineffective!”
Have walls been built anywhere else? A generation ago, 16 countries had man-made barriers separating their borders. Today, that number has swelled to 65.
Have they been effective? Are they expensive?Ask Hungary about the effectiveness of fence along its Serbia and Croatia borders. (Illegal immigration there has plummeted.) Ask Israel about the effectiveness of the wall in the West Bank that was built to prevent Palestinians from committing acts of terror inside Israel. [After the wall’s construction, suicide bombings dropped from 73 in the West Bank (between 2000 and July 2003) to 12 (from August 2003 to the end of 2006).]
Turkey is presently building a 550 mile wall along its border with Syria. Expensive ? Probably, but Turkey and the European Union, that partially funded it, seem to think that it is worth it.India has erected a 2500 mile fence along its entire border with Bangladesh in order to minimize illegal immigration and narcotics smuggling. Ah, illegal immigration and narcotics smuggling . . . does this sound familiar?! Was it expensive? Probably, but this did not stop India . . . perhaps because Nancy Pelosi does not live there.
There are also multiple other walls around the world, e.g. between Saudi Arabia-Iraq, Greece-Turkey along the Everos river, in Cyprus between the Greek and the Turkish sides, and in Morocco fences surround the two Spanish cities in Africa, Ceuta and Melilla. I may have missed it, but I do not recall hearing Ms. Pelosi calling them immoral!
What do the American people think on this issue? Is the tide turning? Is support for President Trump growing?According to Washington Post-ABC News poll, support for building a wall on the border, which is the principal sticking point in the stalemate between the president and Democrats, has increased over the past year. Today, 42 percent say they support a wall, up from 34 percent last January. A slight majority of Americans (54 percent) oppose the idea, down from 63 percent a year ago. Again I say, the only immoral ones here are those Democrats who are depriving 800,000 federal workers of a paycheck just for the sake of 0.001 in a Pelosi-pissing contest!
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