Pros And Cons Of Building A Border Wall In The United States

“Build a wall” was the symbol for the political platform of the presidential hopeful Donald Trump during his campaign in the 2016 US election. After winning the election Trump is now facing the realities of building a border wall between the US and Mexico. While Trump works on his wall other methods of keeping undocumented immigrants from entering and working in the United States already exist. Current legislation in Texas has allowed police officers to ask if someone is a legal US citizen (Ghosh), and a proposed E-verify system will give employers the option of checking if a worker is legally in the US before hiring them (Seminara 17). With the effort being put out by local police and legislators already showing promise of a solution a

There are, as of 2016, 46 million B-1/B-2 Visas currently being held by foreigners (Seminara 17), while these numbers on their own would not be an issue if everyone on a visa returned home when the Visa mandated them to do so, but since 2008 illegal border crossings have been outnumbered by visa overstays (Seminara 17). The blocking of land borders will only put a small dent in the numbers of illegal overstays because of the amount of crossing not done by land. A US tally conducted in 2016 found that 739,000 foreigners have come to the United States through means other than over land borders and 545,000 are thought to be still residing in the United States as of January 10th 2017 (Seminara

The border states of Texas and California who are reliant on migrant workers produce 23 percent of the United States gross domestic product (Gosh). These states along with several others being large producers of agricultural goods are experiencing worker shortages caused by recent immigration crackdowns that have lead to large agricultural losses. In 2011 the state of Georgia decided to crack down on the states illegal immigrants in the workforce which lead to the state losing $140 million in agricultural goods when there weren't enough workers left to harvest the crops. (Gosh). Rumors of the upcoming wall have already started to change foreigners opinion that the United States is a land of opportunity for them and a place to come to work and live (Gosh). The increasing discouragement from the US have all ready lead to work shortages in several border states (Gosh). Some may find relief with this fact but replacing these missing workers with American workers has proven problematic with farm manager Glen Gernetz summing up the issue nicely saying “Though the state had enough unemployed residents nobody wanted to work. It's too damn hard.”