For once and for all, let's be clear. This needs to be said. Far too many times in the past and repeatedly now, with Donald Trump running his fateful campaign for the presidency and saying he and we will "send 11 million 'illegal immigrants' back to Mexico'", when, in fact, they come from all over South America, it should also be noted, here's the facts, here's what needs to be said:
And if it were possible? What about the cost? What would that be?
And even if it were possible--and it's not--you can't try to deport more than 11 million people AND go on a spending spree at the same time, as he has proposed.
And check this out, anyway. Mr. Trump and his Right Wing, racist cohorts are so concerned about what they call "illegals", as we know. What's the status of all of them, anyway? What, if anything are we doing about them lately? Well, great question. Here's what we're doing.
And this same title is from only 3 days ago, to be clear.
And the fact is, these immigrants to our nation pay far more IN to our country than they take out, besides the fact that most are showing up and working at their jobs.
Here are the facts:
- It's logistically impossible to deport more than 11 million people
- It would be outrageously expensive, even if it were possible
And then, we have to ask ourselves, is this who we are? Is this who we want to be? Does not the idea of rounding up more than 11 million people in this nation, people that, some, anyway, have lived here for years and plenty who have family here, do we want to be the ones searching these people out and "sending them back where they came from"?
Does that not remind anyone, anyone of the Nazis, rounding up Jews in the 30s in Germany?
And that's who we want to be?
The fact that any, any candidate for the highest office in our nation is running on this platform and, for that matter, the platform of building a wall, too, across our Southern border and that it would be a centerpiece of his candidacy and that he would get as far as he has on all this nonsense is just stunning. Let's be clear on that, too. Building a wall across our Southern border is also impossible.
And again, even if this Southern wall along our border with Mexico WERE possible, the cost of it would be outrageous, even by itself, let alone if one thought they could deport 11+ million people.
As an interested civil engineer, I decided to do some number crunching to see how incredibly expensive this particular project will be. Thankfully, engineer Ali F. Rhuzkan already provided material estimates for the wall. I simply took his material estimates, found national average costs, and totaled them up. Let’s break it down step by step. The previous calculations stated that the wall will be built using pre-cast (place and set at indoor facility and transport harden concrete panels to job site) and cast-in-place (wet concrete placed at site) concrete. We will also need to include the steel rebar in the material costs.
Going off of materials estimate we have… 167,272,000 cubic yards of cast-in-place concrete at $93/cubic yard = $15,556,296,000 1,030,000 segments of 10’ pre-cast panels at $17/panel = $17,510,000 2,500,000 tons of steel rebar at $600/ton = $1,500,000,000 Total Material Cost Estimate:
$17,073,806,000
That's 17 billion dollars.
Just to keep people out. Or, rather, just to TRY to keep people out.
Then there would be the cost of maintenance, manning and upkeep. From the same article, above:
The U.S. government would have to pay to maintain the wall, which could cost as much as $750 million a year, according to an analysis conducted by Politico. And then if it wanted to man it with personnel, that would be an additional cost — border patrol has an operating budget of $1.4 billion for 21,000 agents.
And again, a wall?
Does that not remind anyone who knows anything about history of Nazi Germany and their wall?
Finally, here's one last insanity and this is from the last 10 hours, from Mr. Trump's trip yesterday to Mexico.
Anyone who knows anything about international politics knows that one nation cannot, patently cannot, make another nation pay for anything. Well, nothing except, after the fact, possibly paying for war retributions. And that would have to be decided from an international court, long after the war was over and the losing, aggressor side would have to be found liable for damages.
The fact is, the facts are, the presidency of Donald J. Trump are based on impossibilities, at least, and maybe emotionalism, if not out-and-out misrepresentations, if not lies.
Why are we paying any attention to this man, this Donald Trump?
And why is he seriously being considered for the highest office in our nation?
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