• Bongo_Stryker@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    Hmm whatdya s’pose it would cost to finish that wall and put a rifleman on a tower every couple hunnerd yards or so? Might be healthcare and social services works out to be a better deal in the long run.

    • ArbitraryValue
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      3 months ago

      The border between the USA and Mexico is 3,439,000 yards long. Even if we assume that it’s passable along that entire length, that still works out to only about 17,000 riflemen. They can’t be on duty 24/7 but even 60,000 soldiers is not that many compared to the size of the US military. (For comparison, the NYPD has 30,000 cops and a yearly budget of 5.8 billion. Homeland Security’s yearly budget is over 60 billion.) You wouldn’t need a wall between the guard posts because if the public wouldn’t mind seeing people shot while trying to cross the border illegally, it wouldn’t mind seeing people stuck in (much cheaper) barbed wire either.

      Of course guard towers every 200 yards wouldn’t be how the border would be secured with 21st century technology. (Unrestrained violence isn’t necessary.) My point is that the USA chooses to let people cross illegally; stopping them is realistic.

      • Bongo_Stryker@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        I guess you’re right. I thought the wall idea was kinda dumb too, but that was the idea that got pushed. Stopping anybody from crossing the border is feasible, but I suppose it’s a matter of priorities. Yes people are crossing the border illegally, meanwhile the department of defense is practically pissing money into the ocean, all manner of iniquities and wickedness is going on in America. Why focus so much on this particular issue?