Q&A Friday #58: Will The Border Fence Ever Be Built?

02 Feb, 2007 by John Hawkins

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Question: “John, Both Duncan Hunter and Tancredo talk about securing our borders,etc. But even if one of them were (or maybe even both,P,VP,) elected to be the President. Do you think the border fence will really actually be built? Especially since we still have RINO congress plus we still have lobbyists that may buy them off. It seems to me that unless their is a change in Congress’s thinking the wall will not be built,etc. What do you think?” — abel

Answer: It’s going to be extremely difficult to get a border fence built because of legal challenges and also because you will constantly have people in Washington trying to cut off funding.

First of all, look at the San Diego border fence. They began building it in 1993 and it wasn’t “completed” until 2006 because of legal challenges (Completed is in quotes because I think they’re fighting it out in court over another few miles of fencing, but I wasn’t able to confirm whether that was part of the original fence or not). And keep in mind that’s for just 14 miles of fencing. But, was it effective? You bet. “While law enforcement apprehended 200,000 border violators near San Diego during 1992, the number dropped to 9,000 (in 2005).” But, that brings us to problem #2.

Despite everything they say publicly about wanting to secure the border, the majority of Democrats and Republicans in DC really don’t want the flow of illegal aliens cut off. The Democrats look at illegal aliens as future votes (once they can get them legalized) and Republicans are afraid of making Hispanics angry by stopping the flow and plus, they have businesses paying them off in campaign contributions to keep the cheap labor coming.

So, unless you get someone like a Duncan Hunter or Tom Tancredo in the White House, someone who really cares about this issue, I’d bet that the fence will never be built, no matter what the politicians say at election time.