Do We Really Need a Border Wall?

Short Explainers

The US-Mexico border is the most militarized border in the world and it comes at an immense cost: each year American taxpayers spend over 4.8 billion dollars on Border Patrol and another 8.4 billion on Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Is this southern border really worth all of the taxes we pour into it? Absolutely not. Americas fetishization of border security has never worked throughout history, and the pinnacle of its waste, Trumps border wall, accomplishes nothing. Dr. Doug Massey explains. Join us, and make our work possible: https://www.patreon.com/gravelinstitute Institute Merch: https://gravelinstitute.org/merch Follow the Institute! Twitter: https://twitter.com/GravelInstitute Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gravelinsti... Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GravelInstitute CITATIONS: Doug Massey, Understanding America's Immigration Crisis, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, September 2007. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4599074?seq=1 Doug Massey, The Mexico-U.S. Border in the American Imagination, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, June 2016. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26159208?seq=1 The Cost of Immigration Enforcement and Border Security, American Immigration Council, July 2020. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/the-cost-of-immigration-enforcement-and-border-security U.S. Border Patrol Southwest Border Sectors Total Illegal Apprehensions by Fiscal Year, U.S. Customs and Border Control, (FY 1960 - FY 2018). https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2019-Mar/bp-southwest-border-sector-apps-fy1960-fy2018.pdf 5 facts about illegal immigration in the U.S. Jens Krogstad, Jeffrey Passel, DVera Cohn, Pew Research Center, June 2019. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/12/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/ Mexicans decline to less than half the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population for the first time, Jeffrey Passel, DVera Cohn, Pew Research Center, June 2019. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/12/us-unauthorized-immigrant-population-2017/ US Undocumented Population Continued to Fall from 2016 to 2017, and Visa Overstays Significantly Exceeded Illegal Crossings for the Seventh Consecutive Year, Robert Warren, Center for Migration Studies, January 2019. https://cmsny.org/publications/essay-2017-undocumented-and-overstays/