Who's Gonna Build Your Wall, Donald?

But as I travel through this big ol' world,

there's one thing I really fear;

that's a white man in a golf shirt,

with a cellphone in his ear.

Who's gonna build your wall, boy?

Who's gonna mow your lawn?
Who's gonna cook your Mexican food,

when your Mexican maid has gone?

Who's gonna wax the floor tonight,

down at the local mall?

Who's gonna wash your baby's face?
Who's gonna build your wall?

(Tom Russell: “Who's Gonna Build Your Wall?”)

Throughout his campaigning for the presidency of the United States of America, Donald Trump promised that he would build a wall along the US/Mexico border to keep illegal immigrants out. It was a popular policy, despite the fact that polls show that the majority of Americans don't want it, and many people did not think he was being serious. However, on 25 January 2017, Trump signed an Executive Order calling for just such a wall to be built.

Already the sheer economics of such a massive building project are being called into question. Donald Trump envisaged a 1000 mile, 40 foot high wall, which he first estimated would cost $8 billion, for what he then saw as a wall/fence combination, then which jumped to $10 billion, then $12 billion. However, one estimate from the investment company Bernstein has put the projected cost at anything from $14 billion to $25 billion, whilst MIT have estimated it from $27 billion to a staggering $40 billion.

There are some countries with a smaller GDP than that.

When financial experts in these matters speak, Mr Trump would do very well to listen. Right here in Edinburgh, Scotland, we have the lovely (open to interpretation) Scottish Parliament Building at Holyrood, at the foot of the city's Royal Mile. When the then Secretary or State for Scotland, the late Donald Dewar ordered the building, he said it would cost £40 million (US $50.5 million) and be completed by 2000. It was finally opened in 2004, at a cost of £414 million ($523 million) – over ten times the original estimate.

Oh, but don't worry about cost, Trump says he's going to make Mexico pay for the wall. Yeah, that seems very likely, doesn't it? If you had an antisocial neighbour who built a wall along the edge of your garden, then sent you the bill for it, just how would you react? So it is no surprise that Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, has clearly stated that Mexico will pay a big fat NADA for any such wall;

"It is evident that we have differences with the new United States government on some issues, such as a wall that Mexico absolutely will not pay for," Peña Nieto told The Guardian. "At no time will we accept anything that goes against our dignity as a country and our dignity as Mexicans."

American's, did you really expect any other reaction from President Peña Nieto?  As Americans tend to be very protective of their property, consider this; imagine you had a belligerant and anti-social neighbour moved next door to you, built a wall along the edge of your garden, and then sent you the bill for it?  Just how would you react?  Now you know how Senor Peña Nieto feels.

Just how could the USA make Mexico pay for the wall? By using their military firepower in a show of strength to threaten Mexico into paying? Because I sure as hell can't see any other way. There is a term for those who threaten or use violence against a country to achieve political ends; it is called international terrorism.

Building such a wall is only part of the story. It would also need maintaining, and of course, extra border patrol officers. Trump has already stated that he would recruit an additional 15,000 such officers to patrol the border. Perhaps supporters of the wall think that Mexico is going to pay for them too? Dream on – the salaries of each and every one of them would be going on your taxes.

Then of course there are the sheer logistics of building such a wall. First there is the physical geography in some places to consider, which may actually increase the cost even further. But there also exists a legal barrier, in the form of a 47 year old US/Mexico treaty to protect water rights, which could stop the entire project in it's tracks before it even gets started. As AP reported;

“The Trump administration also must adhere to a decades-old border treaty with Mexico that limits where and how structures can be built along the border. The 1970 treaty requires that structures cannot disrupt the flow of the rivers, which define the U.S.-Mexico border along Texas and 24 miles in Arizona, according to The International Boundary and Water Commission, a joint U.S.-Mexican agency that administers the treaty.”

Of course, Trump could just flaunt this law – as well as common decency, and go ahead with his wall, cutting off water. Indeed, Trump already has past form for this. When Donald Trump was building his Menie Golf Course in Scotland (because Scotland really needs another golf course, right?) in the early noughties, he tried to force local villagers out of their homes at nearby Balmedie, so he could pull their cottages down, which he considered an eyesore. Among other tactics he tried, he discovered that the water supply for the cottages crossed his land, and cut it off. This included the home of an elderly woman, whom now 92, still collects water daily from a nearby river.

So, yes, Trump could do that to an entire country. But Americans would be well-advised to ask just how that would make their entire country look on the world stage, if they cut water off to a country with a great many very poor people? And by the way, interfering with cross-border water supplies happens to be illegal under international law. Are you now going to flout the United Nations as well? Just how isolationist does the USA want to be? To the point they are treated as even more of a pariah on the world stage than they already are?

Besides which, rivers do not just flow from the USA into Mexico, but also in the other direction, and rivers coming into the US from Mexico enter into some of the most arid semi-desert regions in the American continent. So it could really be a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Of course, there is the argument that rivers could be piped under the wall. This is true, they could indeed – and that would push the price up even higher. Added to which, in the case of some rivers, where water can go, human beings could possibly fit through as well, thereby making the wall ineffective in stopping at least some illegal immigrants. In a nightmare scenario, there could be some Mexicans would try to crawl through the tunnels, get stuck and drown or suffocate. And if some heartless Trump supporters are thinking “Good job too.”, consider that may actually be water flowing into the USA for drinking or the irrigation of crops, which would then be contaminated.

Would a wall even be effective? One of the biggest problems facing the USA is drug-trafficking across the border from Mexico. A wall, no matter how high, is not going to stop that. Many years ago the paranormal magazine Fortean Times ran a story of an increasing number of UFO sightings in New Mexico, which turned out to be drug gangs in Mexico ingeniously firing home-made rockets across the border, with the nose-cones packed with drugs. Since then, the Mexican drug barons have turned to using RPGs, bazookas, high-powered rifles, air cannon, and more recently drones to deliver their shipments across the border. How does now stop that? Even more border patrol officers, at an ever-increasing hike to the US taxpayer?

Some may say that the wall will stop illegal immigrants from crossing on foot or by road vehicle. It may well do. But then, approximately 40% of undocumented immigrants into the USA arrive by air, and overstay business or tourist visas. It does not take a genius to work out that if you block one approach, then obviously the number entering by air and overstaying their welcome is going to increase dramatically. And for those who cannot afford visas, the Gulf of Mexico lies to the east of Mexico, and the Pacific Ocean lies to the west, both offering the ever-tempting means of entering by water. How does one stop that? Even more border patrol officers going on the public payroll? Just where does this stop? And apart from rising costs, with some of the poorest Mexicans trying to get into the USA by water, that could lead to both an increase in people-trafficking, and people drowning as they try to cross into the USA on poorly-constructed vessels. Does the USA really want to see a humanitarian crisis in the Gulf of Mexico similar to that currently happening in the Mediterranean? I certainly know my many American friends would never want to see that happen.

So if a 1000 mile long, 40 foot high, multi-billion dollar wall is going to be impractical, in financial, legal, physical, and logistical terms, which could ultimately cost many human lives, and could see the USA ostracised by the international community, just why is Donald Trump so very intent on building it? I think you only need to look at his own words to find the answer to that, and sorry America, but you've been duped.

Donald Trump has said that “it's going to be a fantastic wall”, and also that “one day it's going to be named after me”. There's your answer. Trump does not want this wall to keep out illegal immigrants, nor to stop drug-trafficking, because it can do neither. Instead it is an expensive vanity project from his already outrageous ego; he wants to build something akin to the Great Wall of China, which will called The Trump Wall for generations to come, long after he is dead and gone (which may be a while yet – only the good die young), and US voters have taken the bait, hook, line and sinker.

In the UK in the 19^th century, there was a fashion for the rich to build outlandish, expensive, and often useless structures – they were known as follies. “Trump Folly” may be a much better name for his ridiculous wall.

It is far from funny however, as it may very well yet escalate beyond $100 billion, and it may still be under construction long after the end of Donald Trump's presidency, even in the extremely unlikely event of him gaining a second term.

Wherever walls have been built as boundaries – Berlin, Belfast 'Peace' Walls, Israel/Palestine – they have come in for international criticism, and quite rightly so. In building this wall Donald Trump will bring shame upon the USA, and I for one am angry about that. As I have many good American friends, I know that most Americans are good, kind, caring people, who most certainly do not deserve the condemnation which their country already sees worldwide, nor to have that exacerbated just because a narcissistic, spoiled, petulant child in the Oval Office feels he needs his ego massaged.

And no, America, Mexico will not be paying to build it, and certainly not to maintain and patrol it. Despite all of Trump's promises to cut taxes, each and every US taxpayer will be paying for the building, maintenance, and patrolling of Donald Trump's monument to his own ego for many decades to come.

Have a nice day!