President Donald Trump will ask Congress to provide only $2 billion for the border wall by late 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal .
The small request for 2021 construction will help avert a budget showdown and government shutdown near the election in November. But it will not slow construction of the border wall because it is now being built with almost $14 billion in funds transferred from the Department of Defense.
The smaller proposal, the officials said, reflects the fact that the administration needs fewer resources to build a wall along the U.S. southern border, as it has essentially met its funding goals by shifting money from the military toward construction. The additional requested money, they said, would go toward new sections of wall that haven’t yet been planned.
The money transferred from the Department of Defense can build an estimated 1,000 miles of border fencing:
With those transfers, the administration has amassed the $18 billion it requested. It estimates the money could pay for as much as 885 miles of Mr. Trump’s preferred style of border fencing, two administration officials last month, a significant proportion of which would replace existing barriers. The White House budget document estimates the money would pay for approximately 1,000 miles.
Much of the construction would be slated for 2021 and beyond, presuming Mr. Trump wins a second term in office.
The government procurement process delays the start of construction so that only 104 miles of fencing has been built so far. But officials expect roughly another 400 miles of fencing will be built by early 2021. In his February 4, 2020, State of the Union speech, Trump declared that we already have a “very strongly guarded southern border, where, as we speak, a long, tall, and very powerful wall is being built,” adding, “We have now completed over 100 miles and have over 500 miles fully completed in a very short period of time. Early next year, we will have substantially more than 500 miles completed.”
Construction of the border wall is behind schedule, in part, because of weak GOP support, strong opposition by Democrats, activists’ lawsuits, and the practical difficulty of building many miles of border wall through deserts:
February 8, 2020
Jorge Ramos is mad at
Mexico for blocking illegal immigration into America
Jorge
Ramos was born in Mexico City and became a journalist there. He
eventually came to America on a student visa, got a job at a Spanish-language
TV station in Los Angeles, liked it, and stayed. Along the way,
he became rich and famous as the face of the news on Univision, America's
largest provider of Spanish-language content. Although registered as
an independent, his political stances, especially his support for open-borders,
align him completely with the current hard-left incarnation of the Democrat
party.
On
Friday, a very unhappy Ramos acknowledged that Trump fulfilled one of his
campaign promises. When Trump said that he was going to build a wall
and that Mexico would pay for it, Leftists simultaneously castigated him for
racism and laughed at the notion that Mexico would ever pay to keep its citizens
from fleeing corruption and poverty within Mexico by illegally crossing into
the United States.
After
all, for Mexico, illegal immigration into America is a great gig, because it
acts as a safety valve and a source of funds. If they didn't have unlimited
access to America (that is, unlimited by such constraints as visas and
immigration policies), Mexican citizens who have been burdened by decades of
corruption and mismanagement would have no option but to suffer and then,
finally, to rise up in revolution. For decades now, from the
government's point of view, it's been better to give unhappy citizens a
pamphlet with advice about crossing the border safely (albeit
illegally) and then sit back and wait for the remittances ($26.1 billion
in 2017) that help keep the Mexican government afloat.
Imagine
the shock for the open-border left when Trump didn't just keep his promise, but
went one better, by getting Mexican president Andrés Manuel López-Obrador
(aka AMLO) to act as his armed enforcer at Mexico's southern border,
blocking caravans making their way to America from mismanaged countries south
of Mexico.
Mexico has effectively turned into an extension
of Mr. Trump's immigration police beyond American territory. And this is the
case on multiple fronts: On the southern border with Guatemala, they prevent
Central American migrants from coming into Mexico; on the northern one, they
block those seeking entry to the United States from leaving. The decision of
Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also known as AMLO, to follow this
approach is misguided. He should let migrants continue their journey north.
[snip]
This is a radical change in immigration policy
for the United States. In the past, Central American asylum seekers were
allowed to remain on American soil while waiting for their cases to be
processed.
Central American immigration has always been a
source of frustration for the United States. But the most powerful country in
the world holds a certain degree of responsibility for what goes on in its
hemisphere, and it is perfectly capable of accepting the most vulnerable people
on the continent. It has done it before, and can still do it.
That's
some serious arrogance there. This man, whom America graciously
allowed in, now insists that America simply open her borders and welcome tens
of millions of illiterate, unskilled people because he claims she has an
entirely imaginary responsibility to make life better for them.
The
fact that unlimited illegal immigration often makes life less good for those in
America legally, whether African-Americans who lose jobs and housing to these
illegal aliens or taxpayers who find themselves funding people who have no
right to be here, is irrelevant to Ramos. He's like the houseguest
who insists that he's entitled to invite his whole family and their neighbors
over and, by the way, would you please give all of them your ATM card?
Ramos
is correct that Latin America is bedeviled by "extreme poverty and gang
violence." Large parts of Latin America are in terrible shape —
but that doesn't give the population license to bring those problems to
America. This is not a war or a genocide, and they are not
refugees. Their desire to come to America is rational, but that
doesn't mean it's rational for Americans that they come.
Moreover,
as noted at the top of this article in connection with Mexico, Ramos's approach
does nothing more than give corrupt, ineffective Latin American governments a
way to relieve population pressure and bring in money. In other
words, Ramos wants to prop up the same dysfunction he claims to despise.
If
Ramos wants to help beleaguered Latin Americans, he needs to go to those
countries and use his fame and intelligence to change the government and
culture on the ground there. That's hard work,
though. It's easier to write opinion pieces for the New York
Times.
One new
Mexican president. Dozens of new reasons to build the wall.
In Mexico, it is often impolite to tell someone "No." If
you want to spare someone's feelings, many people say "Maybe."
Everyone knows that means "No."
Mexico stopped worrying about American feelings long
ago. Among the fashionable public officials and academics, scorn has
been the ruling emotion for decades. We see that more recently in
the last week's elections.
Pretending otherwise is just too much work in Mexico
today. The new president declares he is a socialist, but he will be
hard pressed to show how his new socialist policies are at all different from
the old socialist policies that govern so many parts of Mexican
life. That's what we said about Venezuela, come to think of it.
Those who predict that their "Fill in Blank" Latin
American country has finally bottomed out and is now turning around are often,
even invariably, wrong.
But at least admitting they are socialists has the added benefit
of sticking a finger in the eye of their terrible neighbors to the north – who
everyone knows ruined Mexico by stealing a good chunk of the country in 1848.
Anyone who reads the daily papers in Mexico is reminded of that
157-year-old treaty every day: for most of the country, the national slogan and
curse remains "Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United
States." We
can even hear it today from Mexican nationals and their descendants in the U.S.
who glorify La Raza at the expense of their adopted country.
Oh, and by the way, Americans are still waiting for any kind of
public display of support for those who died on 9-11. Mexicans
largely ignored it, when they were not supporting it behind closed doors at
their local universities.
The truly troubling pronouncements out of Mexico City are even
easier to find. The
newly elected president, Andrés López-Obrador, was gleeful during the election
when he told his compadres they should all move to America,
illegally. His encouragement along with his pro-poverty policies
will set the stage for another tsunami of illegal immigration.
Then members of López-Obrador's Cabinet-in-waiting started talking
about the war on drug cartels, and why should Mexico do America's dirty work?
The first statement does not need much interpretation, other than
the obvious but often ignored: the new president of Mexico is encouraging his
countrymen to invade the United States. Not with guns and soldiers,
but with campesinos and huaraches .
It's a bitter and hostile act that we should treat as such.
The new talk about amnesty for drug-dealers is even
crazier. This is just an admission of what anyone who cares to
already knows: Mexico is run by a collection of drug cartels and other violent
outlaws. This collection of criminals has killed thousands of public
officials, policemen, and reporters – all in the name of preserving a criminal
status quo that no one even feels like pretending does not exist
anymore. They even write songs glorifying them.
They get what they want when they want it.
That is why we cannot build the Coulter-Trump Border Wall fast
enough, tall enough, and proudly enough.
In addition to writing scintillating bestsellers about black
violence in America, good ol' Colin Flaherty also covered Mexico for several
newspapers and radio stations in San Diego, back in the day.
THE
NEXT MEXICAN INVASION IS AT HAND:
"Mexican president candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for
mass immigration to the United States, declaring it a "human right".
We will defend all the (Mexican) invaders in the American," Obrador said,
adding that immigrants "must leave their towns and find a life, job,
welfare, and free medical in the United States."
"Fox’s
Tucker Carlson noted Thursday that Obrador has previously proposed granting
AMNESTY TO MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS. “America is now Mexico’s social safety net,
and that’s a very good deal for the Mexican ruling class,” Carlson added."
"Many Americans forget is that our country is located
against a socialist failed state that is promising to descend even further into
chaos – not California, the other one. And the Mexicans, having reached the
bottom of the hole they have dug for themselves, just chose to keep digging by
electing a new leftist presidente who wants to surrender to the cartels and who
thinks that Mexicans have some sort of “human right” to sneak into the U.S. and
demographically reconquer it." KURT SCHLICHTER
Billionaire Mexicans tell their poor
to JUMP U.S. OPEN BORDERS and LOOT THE STUPID GRINGO… and loot they do!
Billions of dollars are sucked out of
America from Mexico’s looting!
1) Mexico
ended legal immigration 100 years ago, except for Spanish blood.
2) Mexico is the 17th richest nation
but pays the 220th lowest minimum wage to force their subjects to invade the
USA. The expands territory for Mexicans, spreads the Spanish language, and
culture and genotypes, while earning 17% of Mexico's gross GDP as Foreign
Remittance Income.
Mexico: Where Is Your Shame?
At a demonstration Wednesday in
Mexico City against Arizona's law.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Immigration: Mexico's government
gloated triumphantly after a federal judge's injunction blocked Arizona's
immigration law. But it's no victory for Mexico. In fact, Mexico's leaders
ought to be mortified.
As radical immigration activists
crowed with glee and the Obama administration claimed victory, Mexico's
government joined the applause.
Calling Judge Susan Bolton's
injunction Wednesday "a step in the right direction," Mexican Foreign
Minister Patricia Espinosa declared: "The government of Mexico would like
to express its recognition for the determination demonstrated by the federal
government of the United States and the actions of the civil organizations that
organized lawsuits against the SB 1070 law."
In reality, it ought to be ashamed.
Supposedly framed as an issue of federal power pre-empting state power, it's
hardly Mexico's business. But Mexico made a big show of saying its interest was
in protecting its nationals from the dreadful racism of Arizona that its own
citizens, curiously enough, keep fleeing to.
Espinosa said her government was busy
collecting data on civil rights violations and her department had issued an
all-out travel warning to Mexican nationals about Arizona.
That's where Mexico's hypocrisy is
just too much.
First, Mexico encourages illegal
immigration to the U.S. Oh, it says it doesn't, but it prints comic book guides
for would-be illegal immigrants and provides ID cards for illegals once they
get here. In Arizona alone, Mexico keeps five consulates busy.
That's not out of love for its
own citizens, but because Mexicans send cash back to Mexico that helps finance
the government.
Instead of selling its wasteful state-owned oil company or
getting rid of red tape to create jobs in Mexico, Mexico spends the hard
currency from remittances. It fails to look at why its citizens leave.
According to the Heritage
Foundation-Wall Street Journal 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, Mexico's big
problem is — no shock — government corruption, where it ranks below the world
average.
That's where Mexico's cartels come in.
Mexico's encouragement of illegal
immigration undercuts its valiant war against its smuggling cartels. The
cartels' prowess and firepower have made them the only ones who can smuggle
effectively across the border. U.S. law enforcers say they now control
human-smuggling on our southern border.
Feed them immigrants and they grow
more cash-rich — and right now, immigrant smuggling is about a third of the cartels'
income.
Mass graves and car bombings are
signs of criminal organizations getting bigger, and more powerful. Juarez,
which has lost 5,000 people this year, bleeds because cartels fight over not
just who gets the drug routes, but who gets the illegal-immigrant smuggling
routes, too.
Aside from the cartel mayhem in
Mexico, the bodies are piling up in the Arizona desert and U.S. Border Patrol
rescues of abandoned illegals left to die have risen.
It's not the desert's fault,
and it's certainly not Uncle Sam's fault, as activists claim. No, it's the fact
that Mexicans are encouraged to emigrate. Criminal cartels don't fear
abandoning their human cargo in the desert, as long as Mexico does nothing and
blames Uncle Sam.
Hearing Mexico's government now cheer
the Arizona ruling, which will only encourage more illegal immigration, gives
the country's regime a pretty inhuman face.
If Mexico had any decency, it would
do all it could to discourage illegal immigration and keep a respectful silence
about Arizona.
It needs U.S. support for its war on
cartels. Instead of insulting American citizens, Mexico should confront
directly the reasons why its people are so desperate to leave, and do all in
its power to destroy the cartels that are slowly killing the nation. That
includes defunding the murderous gangs by halting illegal immigration.
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