Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” opens with, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” He goes on to describe how the Earth itself seems to reject the presence of a wall, and “… sends the frozen-ground swell under it, and spills the upper boulders in the sun.”
Frozen ground swell is not likely to be a problem for the wall planned for America’s southern border, but there is still something unlovable about the wall itself. Some might engage in wishful thinking about the present. Some look back fondly to a time when a wall was not needed. And some probably look forward optimistically to a day when it will no longer be necessary.
Superficially, the current federal shutdown and political argument are about the money it will cost to build it. At its root, though, the disagreement is about the wall itself, irrespective of what it costs and who would pay for it. If you examine the record of Congress over the last two or three decades, clearly budget management has not been a consideration, let alone a priority. We wouldn’t have a national debt of nearly $20 trillion if it were. The budget, then, is simply a convenient place for politicians to anchor their political tug-of-war.
One result of this is that a data analysis showing that a wall could be cost-effective is not likely to “win the day” as far as the argument goes. For those who still have an open mind on the issue, though, the cost data is still important in our decision-making on building the wall. It is a key element in a cost-benefit analysis.
That open-minded audience, wondering whether the wall makes financial sense, will undoubtedly be interested in a recent analytical research report showing exactly that: a southern border wall could reduce expenditures on illegal immigrants enough to pay for its construction. The wall could “pay for itself.”
The analysis was done by the Center for Immigration Studies, which says it based its findings on data from the National Academies of Science and the Institute of for Defense Analyses.
One of its principal findings was that the net cost of educating each illegal immigrant would average $82,191 in 2018 dollars. Given a $5 billion estimated construction cost, the wall would have to prevent just 3 to 4 percent of the projected illegal crossings in order to cover its cost.
The CIS report points out some of the limitations of this of analysis in a section entitled, “Important Caveats About This Analysis.” One of these is that a wall only addresses a portion of the illegal immigration flow. Another significant portion comes from people who entered the U.S. legally and simply overstayed their visas, permanently. Tracking these people down has proven to be an expensive and time-consuming process not made easier by “sanctuary” cities, counties and states.
A second limitation noted in the report is that “A large share of the net fiscal cost of illegal immigrants is at the state and local level, not the federal level. The costs of building the wall will be borne by the federal government.”
Beyond the CIS caveats we should add that the federal government does subsidize some of the costs of educating all students and some of the costs of feeding them, also. It would take a Herculean effort to sort out the relative contributions in each case, though, and we might have to accept the uncertainty as it is. It would be even more difficult to sort out the correct allocation of foreign language costs and there, too, we might just have to live with that accounting imperfection.
The accounting complications do not change the reality, of course, but they do dilute somewhat the rhetoric surrounding the cost argument. The wall may “pay for itself” in the country as a whole, but in the federal budget as a standalone accounting report it is an expenditure without an apparent compensating increase in income or decrease in cost.
To those caveats we would add that any time an issue involves illegal activities data involves estimates. This is the case in criminal justice statistics, for example, where there is the persistent issue of unreported crimes.
The CIS report has its limitation but taken a whole, it provides a very valuable respite from the windbags and tragedy-mongers who have tried to dominate the conversation about the wall. It deals in facts and best estimates, a rare treat.
For those who haven’t already made their decision on the issue, it is probably wise not to let political rhetoric control our thinking on the wall issue. To paraphrase former president Obama, “If you like your open mind, you can keep your open mind.” It can’t hurt.
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