So we now finally have to take up Mr. Trumps campaign promise to build a wall on our southern border.
Of course this has been tried before. The Ming Dynasty put considerable effort into precluding the Mongol hordes from running roughshod over their social services and food banks, or whatever it is Mr. Trump worries these people, hard working in my experience, believes they will consume. And the Ming Dynasty did not find this to be a permanent solution no matter how much they spent.
Some say this is going to cost 40 billion dollars. This is the opinion of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That is like three aircraft carriers and all the airplanes they can hold.
Homeland Defense says it will only be 21.3 billion dollars. Ok, only two aircraft carriers.
Beyond the cost, the impact on the landowners will be substantial, for the wall is not a fixture to run along the Rio Grande the pace along the borders of New Mexico, Arizona and finally California. There is way more to it.
For example we have some archaic international device called a “treaty” with Mexico in which we agreed neither country would build on the Rio Grande flood plain. This means the wall will sit well inside Texas.
What Mr. Trump also didn’t say in 2015 when he began his campaign is his plan is to enhance the 650 miles of already existing fencing, three deep in some places, plus other barriers on the US Mexican border to make it a nearly 2000 mile wall. The plan is to make this 18 feet tall, with limited access either way, all the way.
Personally I intend to invest in Mexican companies making 19 foot ladders.
Lawyers Road Review 
Excellent point. As I recall, Mr. Trump originally promised in 2015 that the Mexicans would pay for this wall (an invitation which the Mexican government politely declined). The Mexicans and other illegals from south of the border would not be trying so hard to come to this country, if the American small businesses and homeowners weren’t so dependent on them as a source of cheap labor to do the manual labor type jobs that American citizens don’t want — i.e. landscaping work, home improvement projects, etc.) for which the illegals are usually paid in cash under the table and no taxes are ever imposed on their wages for this cheap labor. My wife’s step-brother who has worked for the border patrol in the Blaine/Sumas area for the past 25 years says that the border patrol enforcement is undermanned and underpaid but then again I defy you to show me a government employee who doesn’t feel the same way about the federal agency that employs them. The illegal immigration problem is too large and widespread to be amenable to any kind of simple solution — regardless of the cost. Yet, I almost wish Trump had the needed congressional support for the project just to see what a 2000 mile wall would look like and how long it would take before it started to crumble — like the Great Wall of China (which took over 400 years to complete notwithstanding all the free labor the Chinese had to throw at the project0. Forgot the ladders, invest in the spray paint industry for all of the graffiti that would decorate the wall long before it was ever completed.
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I had not considered the presence of spray paint in America. I wonder how different the Mexican side would look? Not that what I see on the walls of Seattle are all that ineligible as language of any sort. To “Tag” as they do here in the states translates as a verb in Spanish “poner una etiqueta a”. I suspect the Mexicans would run out of paint before they finish that effort.
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