The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: wall
Trump’s Wall Plan Ignores Immigration Realities

Trump’s Wall Plan Ignores Immigration Realities

During a rage-fueled rant in Phoenix a few days ago, President Donald Trump threatened a government shutdown if Congress doesn’t appropriate the billions he needs to construct a wall along the southern border. Though he now ignores his once-upon-a-time pledge that Mexico would pay for the wall, it’s no surprise that the president pulled out a signature red-meat theme.

His poll numbers are trending steadily downward, and a raucous xenophobia tends to energize his base. In a campaign-style rally, he whipped up the frenzy with escalating rhetoric: “If we have to close down our government, we’re building that wall,” he exclaimed, as supporters chanted, “Build the wall!”
Let’s ignore, for a moment, the virtually insurmountable logistical, legal, economic and political obstacles presented by such a project. Even if Trump were to build his promised barrier — and that’s quite unlikely — it would not solve the nation’s biggest immigration challenge: what to do about the undocumented people who are already here.

The huge waves of workers who crossed the border without documents have ebbed to a trickle, having slowed substantially during the Great Recession. It was back during the late 1990s and early 2000s that the wave crested, when home construction was booming and businesses demanded cheap labor.
Back then, Democratic and Republican administrations alike conspired to ignore the low-wage workers who were surging across the border because big farmers wanted them, hoteliers wanted them, construction magnates (yes, Trump, too) wanted them. Nowadays, rates of illegal entry are about as low as they’ve been in 40 years, if Border Patrol apprehensions are any indication.

But we have insisted on keeping the millions of people who remain here living in the shadows indefinitely. There are among us — cleaning hotel rooms, mowing lawns, attending college, flipping burgers, playing high school basketball, picking onions, supervising construction sites, managing small shops — an estimated 11 million people without papers. They work hard, pay taxes, own homes, attend parent-teacher conferences, speak English and stand for the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag.

A few go astray, selling illegal narcotics, driving under the influence, joining gangs, robbing stores. But illegal immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than those who were born here. (To the consternation of his Latino supporters, Obama deported more undocumented workers than his predecessor — or Trump — concentrating on violent criminals.)

The criminals are outnumbered by the young adults — known as Dreamers — who qualified for President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which granted work permits to those who met certain criteria. (Nearly 2 million were eligible for DACA, but only about 800,000 were actually granted deferrals from deportation.)

Trump, of course, ran on a pledge of mass deportation, and it may be that some of his die-hard supporters still believe that he can round up millions — including grandmothers, kindergarteners and infants — and send them back. But the rest of us know better.

As it turns out, most of us don’t even want that to happen. According to a Marist poll conducted in February, 80 percent of those surveyed supported a path to citizenship for the illegal immigrants who are already here. That included 69 percent of Republicans. An even larger percentage of Trump’s voters approve of allowing Dreamers to stay — 78 percent, according to a July survey by Morning Consult.

That makes sense. From big cities in California to small towns in Iowa, Americans have gotten used to working with and living beside people with different languages and cultures. That familiarity eases fear and resentment.

Still, the nativist minority has managed to scare the wits out of most Republican politicians, who fear a right-wing election challenge if they dare suggest a reasonable pathway to legal status. Indeed, 10 Republican-led states have sued the Trump administration to end the Dreamers program. So far, Trump hasn’t responded to the lawsuit, so it’s not clear what he will do.

Though the president has promised to treat the Dreamers “with heart,” his xenophobic impulses have kept the waters roiled, making a grand bargain on immigration reform nigh impossible. Even as a political mirage, Trump’s wall is a formidable barrier to the American Dream for our undocumented neighbors.

Cynthia Tucker won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.

The First Brick In The Wall

The First Brick In The Wall

Reprinted with permission fromProPublica.

President Donald Trump’s administration announced a $600 million bidding contest late Friday night to kick off construction of The Wall, a towering physical barrier between the United States and Mexico.

The process will start with little walls — an unknown number of barriers of concrete and other materials that will serve as models for the bigger wall, which Trump made central to his political campaign.

Construction will proceed with unusual haste. Companies have just two weeks to submit proposals. Finalists will make a two-and-half hour long oral presentation to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, which is overseeing the contest. Winners will be announced by late May.

Steven Schooner, a professor of government contracting at George Washington University, tweeted that the process was “extremely/uniquely complicated (and confusing).”

But CBP officials said the approach was designed to get the best value for the government.

“Through the construction of prototypes, CBP will partner with industry to identify the best means and methods to construct border wall before making a more substantial investment in construction,” the agency said in a statement.

The bidding documents released Friday provide important clues as to what the Trump administration hopes to erect on the 1,200 miles of border with no physical barriers. Some 650 miles are already fenced.

The little walls are supposed to be tall. They should be “physically imposing in height” — 30 feet is preferred, though 18 feet is acceptable. However, the prototypes will be as little as 30 feet long, and cost as little as $100,000.

The little walls are supposed to be strong. They must be able to withstand attacks from “sledgehammer, car jack, pick axe, chisel, battery operated impact tools, battery operated cutting tools, Oxy/acetylene torch” for at least one hour, preferably four. They should also be able to span 45 degree slopes, and block tunneling. Contractors will build prototypes of concrete — Trump’s preferred material — but also other materials that will allow visibility between the two sides. Once the government has determined a model, the prototypes may be demolished.

Finally, the little walls are supposed to be pretty — at least on the U.S. side of the border. The agency wants the walls to be “aesthetically pleasing” so that the color and texture blends into the environment on the “north side of the wall.” There is no similar language for the Mexican side of the wall.

In addition to the tough building conditions, the agency clearly understands another difficulty will be political: Interested builders are urged to discuss their experience in “executing high profile, high visibility and politically contentious” construction projects.

Immigration activists are expected to protest construction of the wall, deploying tactics learned during the long, bitter protests over construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. The bid calls for companies to hire their own private security contractors to protect their projects.

The final cost of the wall — and even whether it will be built — is a matter of debate. Trump has said he anticipates the final bill to be from $10 billion to $12 billion. The Department of Homeland Security has suggested a cost of around $21 billion. Trump’s proposed budget has called for $2.6 billion to begin construction.

In Congress, some Republicans and many Democrats have opposed spending billions for an untested and possibly ineffectual border barrier. Trump has said he will force Mexico to pay for the wall. The Mexican government has rejected the possibility.

What is clear is that the Trump administration’s methods will favor large, experienced government contractors with demonstrated experience in big construction projects. Companies such as KBR, Tutor Perini Corp., Parson Corp. and Fluor Corp. have all indicated an interest in building the edifice.

At the same time, the agency has asked bidders to explain how they will meet the agency’s goals to deliver contracts to small, minority and veteran owned companies. Customs and Border Protection aims to pay 38 percent of its contract to small business, 5 percent to woman-owned firms and 3 percent to companies owned by disabled veterans.

In practice, the likely outcome is a few large government contractors overseeing a small army of subcontractors to build the wall.

More than 700 companies signed up for notifications about the building the wall, including more than 140 minority-owned firms — about 20 percent of the total. It is unclear how many of the firms possess the necessary experience and ability to participate in the bid.

How Trump Has Managed to Dumb Down The Immigration Debate

How Trump Has Managed to Dumb Down The Immigration Debate

Published with permission from Alternet.

New evidence suggests Donald Trump’s ignorant and divisive rhetoric on immigration parallels the political discourse on Twitter, suggesting that the bloviating of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee may have an impact on how the immigration debate unfolds.

In collaboration with MIT Media Lab’s Laboratory for Social Machines, Fusion explored a correlation between Trump’s campaign and an increase in Twitter discussions around aspects of the immigration debate, including mass deportation and Trump’s promise to build a “great wall” along the southern border of the United States.

Meanwhile, during that same period, mentions of comprehensive immigration reform fell during Trump’s political rise. The findings suggest Trump is having a direct impact on the immigration debate, ultimately turning people’s attention away from practical, bipartisan solutions and towards platitudes and rhetorical nonsense.

Analyzing a data plot comparing Twitter mentions of offering undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship with Trump’s promise to build a wall, the researchers found a significant decrease in comprehensive immigration reform between May and July 2015, directly correlating with Trump’s announcement on June 16, 2015, that he would seek the Republican nomination for President of the United States.

Talk of comprehensive immigration reform peaked in 2013 after the House of Representatives failed to pass the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, which was intended to “modernize and streamline our current legal immigration system, while creating a tough but fair legalization program for individuals who are currently here.”

A year later, the immigration debate once again focused on providing a pathway to citizenship; in November 2014, President Obama issued several executive actions on immigration, offering deportation relief to five million undocumented immigrants. The Obama administration is currently fighting for those reforms in the Supreme Court.

Prior to Trump entering the race, Fusion reports “28 percent of election-related Twitter chatter about immigration focused on an idea of a pathway to citizenship,” making it the most-discussed immigration-related topic on the popular social networking service. Likewise, less than two percent of immigration-related discussions on Twitter focused on building a wall.

But in July 2015, the conversation flipped, with talk of illegal immigrants, mass deportation and building a southern border wall dominating the political discourse, while comprehensive immigration reform and pathways to citizenship all but disappeared from the Twitter lexicon.

Twitter mentions of mass deportation spiked in August 2015, after Trump promised would enact a “deportation force” to send back 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living int he United States. As Fusion reports, “in September, [mass deportation] even topped the chart briefly as the most-discussed election-related immigration topic.”

Similarly, as Trump’s pro-wall rhetoric increasingly dominated politics in late 2015, 18 percent of all immigration talk on Twitter focused on building a southern border wall, making it the most discussed immigration topic on Twitter. Meanwhile, only 6 percent of immigration-related mentions discussed a pathway to citizenship.

And the trend continues even as the remaining candidates pivot towards the general election; in May, MIT’s Media Lab recorded 22 percent of immigration-related policy talk on Twitter focuses the wall, while only 2 percent mentions comprehensive immigration policies, including a pathway to citizenship.

It’s clear Trump’s haranguing about building a wall and kicking out 11 million people resonates with the Twitter users, successfully dominating the political conversation, while sensible solutions fall to the wayside. As the election continues, it remains to be seen whether a comprehensive, bipartisan solution can once again ignite interest on social media, or if Trump’s reductive, anti-immigrant policies continue to monopolize the debate.

Photo: DonkeyHotey/Flickr CC

Here’s How Trump’s Wall Would Create A Diplomatic Crisis

Here’s How Trump’s Wall Would Create A Diplomatic Crisis

Since announcing his candidacy for president last summer, Donald Trump has said that Mexican leaders have manipulated the United States, using crime and illegal immigration to further their agenda. He claims that the Mexican government disseminated pamphlets about successful illegal immigration, and that the Mexican and the U.S. government’s supposed inaction on illegal immigration has cost the U.S. billions of dollars in healthcare, housing, and education expenditures in addition to its effect on crime and jobs.

He has also advocated for building a giant, uninterrupted wall along the U.S.-Mexico Border.

However, although “build that wall!” has become a Trump campaign catchphrase, Trump hasn’t offered a substantial policy proposals on the project, nor has he elaborated on the different tactics he would use to “build a great, great wall. . . [that] Mexico will pay for.”

Trump can talk all he wants, but the question remains: Why would Mexico pay anything for this disaster of an infrastructure project? And what would happen if they refuse?

According to Adam K. Webb, Resident Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Nanjing,  “Mexico simply will not agree to build a wall, no matter how much noise Trump makes about it.  It would be an immensely unpopular expense when a large chunk of Mexico’s population lives in poverty.  No Mexican president would last in office if he budged on this.”

But Donald Trump is the greatest negotiator in the world, author of The Art of the Deal and other gems. Surely, he must have a strategy.

On his website Trump states that until Mexico pays for the wall, his administration would impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages; increase fees on all temporary visas issued to Mexican CEOs and diplomats (and if necessary cancel them); increase fees on all border crossing cards – of which we issue about one million to Mexican nationals each year (a major source of visa overstays); increase fees on all NAFTA worker visas from Mexico (another major source of overstays); and increase fees at ports of entry to the United States from Mexico [Tariffs and foreign aid cuts are also options].  

In other words, Trump will confiscate any payments that undocumented workers send back to their families and friends in Mexico as a form of economic sanctions.

The World Bank reports that remittance payments comprise only 2 percent of Mexican GDP; however, as the National Review explains, Trump’s remittance ban would have a profound effect on poorer local economies in Mexico, where 19 percent of income comes from remittances. To complicate things further, Trump would increase the fees of diplomatic visas, as a political statement, and on the visas of Mexican nationals working in the U.S. under NAFTA.

Trump claims that, after a while, it would be more expensive and parlous for the Mexican government to allow the United States to institute these policies than it would be for them to construct the wall.

That’s ridiculous.

Though Trump proposes to “impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages,” it would be incredibly difficult for the government to effectively calculate and monitor illegal wages, especially as many undocumented workers use social security numbers voluntarily shared with them by family members.

He also wants to “increase fees on all temporary visas issued to Mexican CEOs and diplomats (and if necessary cancel them)” as a form of diplomatic sanction, but that action would do little more than further disincentivize the Mexican government from cooperating with an already antagonistic Trump administration.

The proposal would create incredible amounts of diplomatic tension with Mexico, which would jeopardize our security and diplomatic standing, and, more importantly for Trump, would make the Mexican government even more hostile to paying for any kind of border wall.

And though Trump promises to “increase fees on all border crossing cards — including those one million cards issued to Mexican nationals, NAFTA worker visas, and port of entry fees — as a lever of pressure on the Mexican government to build a wall, that could just as easily lead to more illegal immigration by Mexicans who can’t afford to cross the border legally.

If Trump increased the fees for visas while crippling the local economies through remittance bans, he would be dis-incentivizing legal immigration. He would be making it more expensive to come to America through a legal route. And if Mexicans really want to come to America in the wake of local economic chaos, they will do whatever it takes — even if it means coming through the previously-excavated tunnels, or simply crossing at the parts of the border where Trump’s fantasy wall won’t be able to reach.

Should Donald Trump plow ahead with his plan, however, the American people, the Mexican government, and other nations will be forced to respond. Let’s consider the global political ramifications of a Trump presidency.

According to Professor Webb, “there are very few ways that [Trump] could try twisting Mexico’s arm harder, without incurring consequences that would far outweigh whatever supposed advantage he might gain by playing to the worst segments of American public opinion.”

Although the United States has been largely unafraid of imposing sanctions to achieve political objectives in the past, Mexico’s fate is so closely tied to the U.S. economy that sanctions in the form of tariffs, limited visas, and customs delays, and asset freezing could be equally detrimental for the U.S. economy — especially since the North American Free Trade Agreement has largely guided continental trade and cross-border investment over the past 2 decades.

World Policy Institute Fellow and former Bard College Professor Jonathan Cristol agreed that Trump’s potential sanctions would lead to unprecedented consequences for Mexico, as the United States imports 81.2 percent of Mexican exports.

And if Trump managed to force Mexico to pay for the wall, it wouldn’t be “without destroying America’s reputation and provoking worldwide counterbalancing against the U.S.” Cristol noted in an email.

Trump would have to strong-arm the Mexican government, possibly by instituting extremely high tariffs on Mexican goods — the costs of which would be passed on to consumers.

“I assume Trump thinks that the cost of building the wall would be less than the damage to Mexican business when U.S. consumers stop purchasing goods produced in Mexico,” Cristol said, “But this ignores two important factors: first, many of these goods are produced by American owned firms, so it would have a rebound effect on the U.S. economy; and second, most importantly, it would be a major violation of World Trade Organization trading rules.”

Both scholars agreed that the sanctions could lead to a variety of responses, from diplomatic measures or brute force.

Professor Cristol said that he was confident that Mexico could win the lawsuit against the U.S. government, predicting that “retaliatory measures would be taken against the U.S. economy to the point at which the damage was equivalent to the damage caused to Mexico.”

And what if Trump responded to Mexican recalcitrance with the threat of force? That in turn could potentially lead to the potential cessation of close diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom, Canada, and France, after those nations were forced to re-evaluate their alliances in light of the United States’ aggressive treatment of Mexico.

Dr. Cristol suggested that, in addition to reconsidering ties with the U.S., Trump’s rhetoric could cause other nations to expand their military industries in order to address their fear of what the United States had become.

Professor Webb agreed, and added that Trump’s actions would affect other nations’ perception of the United States, pushing traditional allies into the Russian and Chinese orbits. Under these circumstances, Mexico would be seen as a victim, evoking sympathy among many other nations.

In short: Though Donald Trump plays the embattled victim of bad trade deals and generous immigration laws, his attitude toward the Mexican government and the Mexican people would isolate the United States on the world stage — as indeed it already has.


Rory Mondshein received her B.A. in Political Studies and Social Policy from Bard College in 2014. In addition to working as a freelance writer, she serves as Oxford Global’s Education Ambassador. In September, Rory will be pursuing her MSc in Human Rights at the London School of Economics. 

Photo: A man walks near the border bridge connecting El Paso with Ciudad Juarez, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, February 24, 2016.  REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez