“ ‘We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked…’ Barrack Obama, 2005. I voted, when I was a Senator, to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in…’ Hillary Clinton, 2015,”(Balluck). The hot topic in today’s day and age is whether or not we should build a wall on our southern border. This is something that Donald Trump ran his campaign on and largely helped his election. I believe that building the wall will benefit America because it will make our border safer, decrease wasted money on illegal immigrants, and cut down America’s crime.
Building the wall will decrease government spending on illegal immigrants. It is estimated by the Federation for American Immigration (FAIR) that illegal aliens cost the federal, state, and local governments a total of $135 billion a year. Illegal aliens pay some taxes for purchasing goods which are estimated at $19 billion. This totals to a net loss of $116 billion a year due to illegal aliens (O’Brien). They add to the cost because they use things such as public education, health care, food stamps, and many public facilities. (Immigrants and Public Benefits) If the wall costs $25 billion it seems like common sense that we could save an estimated $91 billion a year(O’Brien). The extending of the wall would boost the economy by 20,000 to 25,000 jobs to erect and staff (Bahler). Without illegal aliens taking America jobs, more jobs will be open to our citizens.
The creation of a southern border wall will also decrease crime and create a safer border. The wall will make it far harder for drug mules to bring in illegal narcotics because they will be forced to go through border checkpoints where security is tight. In 2015 about 1.5 million pounds of illegal drugs were seized by border security from the southern border alone. Nearly all, 99.8%, of drugs are shipped from Mexico to the United States. In 2015 our coastal and northern borders had about 9,000 pounds of drugs seized from government agencies (Bedard). The wall will also decrease crime because drug use is directly linked with crime. As well, illegal aliens are more likely to commit violent crimes than citizens.
A popular opposing argument would be that the wall will cost an estimated $25 billion to erect. The U.S. government has a federal budget of $4 trillion so creating the wall is relatively cheap(Schallhorn). Trump has also stated that to reduce the costs he will reallocate money from defense which the U.S. already spends a vast majority on. With the U.S. population at about 325.7 million, a $25 billion wall is only about $77 per person. Another argument against the wall says that natural born citizens are responsible for more crimes than illegal aliens, this is true but it is also irrelevant because as stated before there are 325.7 million American citizens compared to the estimated 11 million illegal aliens, so it would make sense that natural born citizens will commit more crime there is a vast majority of them. What we should look at is the rate of crime and how much more likely illegal immigrants are to commit crimes of natural born citizens.
To wrap everything up we should build the southern border wall because it will create jobs, cut wasted spending, decrease crime, and make our border safer. Creating the wall is the only way to secure a safer and more efficient country.