PD Editorial: A wall is a waste of money for US or Mexico

Here's a Friday morning pop quiz. Identify the person who said the following:

“I will build a great great wall on our southern border, and I'll have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”

We didn't say it was going to be hard.

But good luck to anyone, beginning with President Donald Trump, trying to reconcile the boast from his presidential announcement speech in 2015 with a threat delivered this week to shut down the federal government in one week if Congress - that's the U.S. Congress, not its Mexican counterpart - doesn't give him $5 billion for the border wall.

“You want to know something?” Trump told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer during an Oval Office meeting on Tuesday. “I'll tell you what: I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck.”

Trump isn't demanding that Mexico pay for his wall anymore. He's holding the federal government hostage in a bid to force U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill.

It's a ridiculous demand, and Trump will have no one but himself to blame if federal employees are furloughed for Christmas and national park visitors are told to pack up and leave.

The impacts don't stop there. Standard & Poor's estimated that the most recent shutdown, in 2013, cost the U.S. economy $24 billion and reduced economic growth by 0.6 percent.

Mr. President, that's not anything you want on you record.

And this isn't simply a partisan standoff. As House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi pointed out at Tuesday's meeting, Trump can't even marshal enough support from fellow Republicans to get the wall included in a spending bill required to keep the government open after Dec. 21. His position will be weaker still in January, when Republicans lose control of the House.

Neither is it a simple matter of counting votes.

A 1,000-mile-long wall, with a projected cost of $25 billion, isn't going to secure the border or make an appreciable dent in illegal immigration.

Most new illegal immigrants don't enter the United States by sneaking across the southern border. They arrive legally, as tourists or students or temporary workers, and they don't leave as required. No wall will keep them out or force them to leave.

Moreover, the number of illegal immigrants in the United States is declining - without a wall. A review of government data by the Pew Research Center found that the number of unauthorized immigrants fell to the lowest level in more than a decade in 2016.

And most of the adults living here illegally are longtime residents - a median of 14.8 years in 2016 compared to 8.6 years in 2007, according to the Pew Research report.

We aren't suggesting open borders, only that there are more cost-effective security measures, including patrols and aerial surveillance, with barriers where they make sense.

So would assisting Latin American countries. Creating economic opportunities and combating violent crime would give people a reason to stay instead of fleeing to the United States for safety and financial security. That's a wise investment. Trump's wall? A waste of money.

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