An updated analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies found that President Donald Trump’s proposed wall along the U. S.-Mexico border would…
An updated analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies found that President Donald Trump’s proposed wall along the U. S.-Mexico border would pay for itself, even after using conservative estimates of the cost of illegal immigrants and accounting for future flows.
The director of the research, Dr. Steven Camarota, wrote that to pay for Trump’s requested $5.6 billion in funding for the wall it must be able to prevent about “60,000 crossings or 3 to 4 percent of expected illegal crossers over the next decade.”
Camarota’s analysis is the result of calculating the cost of each illegal immigrant and comparing it to the cost of the wall. On day 20 of the partial government shutdown, Democrats continue to refuse to back away from their original $1.3 billion offer for border-security purposes, which does not include any funding for a wall.
“If we make much more conservative assumptions about both the cost of illegal immigrants and future flows, it still shows that a wall would have to stop or deter only a modest percentage of illegal crossings to pay for itself,” he wrote.
