Fantasy vs Reality
How to Close the Border Effectively with a Border Wall
Triple the Army’s size will make it work!
Introduction
Good programs work; bad ones don’t.
History
Thousands still go through the official checkpoints. Others cross the border in the desert or other unguarded places. The wall, as it is currently built, doesn’t work as presented. People go over it, around it, and under it. Stopping them is pure luck.
The Wall, as it is currently built and administered, is a bad program
Finally, so many people get through that the existing facilities for processing them are overwhelmed.
Trump and his supporters have called for the entire wall to be built and the borders closed. What would it take for that to actually work?
Walls
I won’t go into the cost of setting everything up and what the final immigrant processing procedures would be. People seem enthusiastic about the wall, so this article will cover what it would take to make the wall effective.
First, no wall in history has ever been 100% effective. Even the Berlin Wall was not 100% effective. Out of 100,000 who attempted to get through it, almost 5% succeeded. The procedures below MIGHT cut that percentage to 1% for Trump’s wall.
Effective operations
As it is now, the wall is pretty worthless. To be more effective, it will need continuous guards — everywhere. What does that mean?
The border length is 1,954 miles on land and 30 miles at sea. The Navy would probably still have to patrol farther out. To be effective, guard posts need to be close together. Based on 50 feet, that would require 200,000+ guard posts. Assuming a 24-hour operation, one would need 4 soldiers per post after allocating time off, non-guard time loss, and sicknesses.
Adding 800,000 soldiers to the US Army would triple the Army’s size and add costs. The US would probably have to reinstitute the Draft. To be more effective, some, if not all, posts should have 2 soldiers just to have at least one there during bathroom breaks. That would increase the Army’s size by 5 times.
The Navy wouldn’t be as bad. They could probably get by with a couple thousand patrol boats and 10% more personnel or even less since they are already patrolling that area. It is still unlikely that they are currently fully staffed.
Budget
The most significant cost increase would be salaries. However, they would have to build more army posts, barracks, and logistic support like food, medical buildings, and support personnel. Based on current salaries, that could exceed 300 billion dollars for the minimum and 600 billion for the optimum personnel structure. Other costs would increase the total significantly.
Supporting the wall could easily increase the federal budget by 15% to 20%. That’s on top of the wall’s construction cost. That would require a tax increase.
Finally
Ask yourself if the border wall is worth it:
- Wall construction cost — 20 mil/mile or about 40 BILLION dollars (once)
- Army personnel cost — 300 to 600 Billion dollars (per year)
- Army personnel — Increase the army size from 3 to 5 times its current size
- Infrastructure & support personnel — ????? cost (per year)
- Reinstitute the Draft
- 20% income tax increase
Most people never think of the details or history when emotionally supporting a project like this. Feel free to comment if you have supportable different numbers.
References
- Escape numbers
- Construction cost 20 million dollars per mile for 1,954 miles