Jake QuillenProf. Stalbird
ENG 1201 Online
3/26/17
The saying has always been “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”, as George Santayana put it. And it seems to be that President Trump may not remember much of the Ming Dynasty, which was brought to its knees because of problems internally with the dynasty. Current President, Donald Trump, made a promise during his unforgettable campaign for presidency. A promise that he would build a giant wall along the border and the United States and Mexico. Also, stating that Mexico would pay for it. Many problems stand between President Trumps promise and the wall becoming a reality. Problems like finding workers, finding the funds, or even geographical problems. Not to mention the many Americans and the government of Mexico that don’t want anything to do with this wall being built which also hurts our relationship with Mexico. President Trump building the wall on the south border of the United States will do more harm than good if it were to be built.
Part of the promise, President Trump stated that the wall was going to be built by American workers and legal citizens. Finding the workers that are legally documented to build the wall is just one of the many obstacles that make the walls future bleak. Two-thirds of construction firms in America is having trouble finding workers by themselves. Around half of the construction workers in Texas are undocumented and 14 percent lack authorization for employment in the United States. As stated by, Bloomberg. Therefore, it would be very difficult to find workers that are legally authorized to work in the United States as he had promised. It’s not just the initial building of the wall that is a problem with the workers. If the wall were to be built, then there would be an issue with workers to stay to keep up with the mainatnce of the wall. Hiring the workers to build the wall, then paying mainatnce for the wall. All on top of the very high prices of the wall.
NBC News estimates that the cost of the wall is billions of dollars. To keep up with the wall and to have close surveillance of the wall would cost tens of billions of billions of dollars. As President Trump implied that Mexico would indeed pay for the wall in full. “buildable and can be built for far less cost than people think,” Trump stated. After the wall is built the fact remains about mainatnce needs to be performed to the wall. Nobody is going to want to bring their tax dollars up to help pay for the wall. Those who perform mainatnce to the wall must be paid. Along with the items needed to keep the wall up to date would just bring the cost of the wall up more.
Which would bring me to my next point. Due to the climate and the area in which the wall is intended to be built on may make it a little more tough to do so than originally thought. Stated in The Washington Post, “The hurdles include environmental and engineering problems...”. People with farms, ranches, and others just don’t seem to want to sell their land to the government so that the massive wall can be built. Even though the ranchers and farmers as upset about immigrants using their land to cross the border, they still don’t seem to want to get rid of their land. “It’s private land, Trump just can’t go in and build his wall.” Wayne Cornelius, the director of the Mexican migration field research program at the University of California at San Diego stated to CBS News. If the wall were to be built, it wouldn’t completely prevent illegal immigrants from infiltrating our country. Drug traffickers and smugglers are digging more and more tunnels to pass underneath the fencing that already exist at the border. Building a wall won’t get rid of the tunnels, though it would not leave breaches or weakness within the fences or wall.
The Department of Homeland Security already spending millions of dollars a year to fix any breaches in the fences that exist at the borders. It is said by The Washington Post, the wall that currently exists in keeping illegal immigrants out, “building more fences is not the answer,” Department of Homeland Security Jehu Johnson states. Besides, there are some parts where the wall can’t be build due to the terrain. The border consists of mountains, in the most southern parts of New Mexico and rivers at other spots. More surveillance should be provided of throes areas. If the wall were to be built, “as the cement solidifies in those hot temperatures, the resulting wall could become weak, leaving the project at risk of literally crumbling.” As it states on CNN.com. Leaving grounds for rebuild and more repair which in turn just costing more money.
Claiming that Mexico will pay for the wall, which Trump gives an estimate of how much it would cost which is $8 billion, Trump has an assortment of idea that could potentially make Mexico pay the huge bill that the wall build. One of those plans being that he would use a federal anti-terrorism surveillance law to force Mexico to pay for it. In which he plans on threatening to prevent illegal immigrants from sending money to relatives whom still live in Mexico. CBS News reports, trumps other plan to make Mexico pay is by increasing the fees on the temporary visas that Mexican CEOs and other diplomats used to get access to enter the United States. Then increasing fees at entry points at the border between Mexico and United States. An add on to that plan is Trump placing tariffs on imports from Mexico and raising visa fees, CNN.com states. An article from CBS News states that “he has been more forceful about tariffs in his speeches – suggesting that Ford should pay a 35 percent tax parts and vehicles imported from Mexico if it continues there – Trump is more muted in the paper”.
“A wall implies that the relationship between Mexico and the United States is all about criminal interaction, nothing could be further from the truth, there’s a billion dollars a day in trade that’s going back and forth between the United States and Mexico… Anything that blocks that hurts the United States.” Eric Olson, associate director of the Latin American program at the non-partisan Wilson Center. Building the wall will hurt relationships between the United States and Mexico. With the amount of money that goes into the two countries trading with each other. Immigrationimpact.com states that roughly 6 million United States jobs are sustained by the trade Mexico and the United States hold with each other. And “More than 20 percent of all United States jobs are tied in some way to trade along the border. Along with the plan of building the wall to keep out the illegal immigrants, but to take the ones that exist in the United States and dump them on the other side of the wall. Removing undocumented immigrants would “in just two years it would shrink the labor force by 10.3 million workers and reduce real GDP by 1 trillion dollars”.
The Ming Dynasty was started by Zhu Yuanzhang, who announced himself as the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty in 1368. It followed the collapse of the Mongul led Yuan dynasty. The Monguls would continuously hound the border between their empires. Leading to the creation of the Great Wall of China by the Ming Dynasty to stop the harassment of the Monguls. Years after building the wall, the Ming Empire began to have problems with natural disasters, plagues and rebellions. The people of the Ming Empire were tortured and mistreated by Wei Zhongxian, one of the last emperors of the Ming Dynasty. No good policies were being formed, people were starving and unable to pay their taxes. Rebellions started as the fear of the people began to fade. Rebellions destroyed the Ming Empire because of power hungry rulers. The wall remains as a tourist site as many people come to see it everyday. Down the road into the future, United States could share this fate if the wall is built.
Trumps plan to build this wall may be exciting to most the population, but it is not realistic. The “legal” workers that Trump wants to hire to build it just aren’t in the playing cards. “any kind of border barrier can be climbed over, and to prevent that type of activity, we would have to have not just drones in the sky, but a lot of boots on the ground.” Olson says to NBC News. He can’t possibly find enough legal workers to help build the wall or even surveil it. Adding only to the cost of the wall and it’s mainatnce. The funding to provide these workers just doesn’t exist. Along with the funding for the wall to be built itself. Costing a couple billion dollars, Trump implies that Mexico will play for the wall. While the president of Mexico has laughed at the proposals by Trump. If Mexico doesn’t pay for the wall, Americans will not support the wall as they have. Along with these problems, there are issues with the location of the wall could keep them from building the wall in the first place. High heats causing the wall to crumble and fall.
So many different factors have to be taken into effect before the wall can be built. Too many things that would make the wall not work and not enough reasons to make it work. If the Ming Dynasty, which built the Great Wall of China to keep the Monguls out of their country, couldn’t succeed with a wall along their border. What makes Americans think that it would work in this case? Problems inside the country would erupt and cause more problems with the United States. This time, with ourselves. There is no recovering from that. We must look back at the past, specifically the Ming Dynasty, and learn from it so that indeed, history does not repeat itself. Trumps wall is being built for the same reasons as The Great Wall of China, to keep out people and other countries in general. It failed and the country fell. United States is in danger of sharing the same fate if the wall were to be built. As Wayne Cornelius stated in a Washington Post article, Trumps plan is “ludicrous… Any physical barrier can be tunneled under or climbed over or gotten around. There will always be gaps, and smugglers and migrants will seek out those gaps and go through”. Too many damages for too little of rewards means that the wall, that so many Americans and our president seek, does much harm than it does good.
Works Cited
Chuck, Elizabeth. U.S. News. NBC News. 23 Jul 2015. Web. 30 March 2017.
Markon, Jerry. Politics. The Washington Post. 17 Jul 2015. Web. 30 March 2017.
Etter, Lauren. Bloomberg. 26 Jan 2017. Web. 30 March 2017.
Carrol, Jason; Urbany, Bryce; Cummings, Julian; Pisano, Michael; Watkins, Eli; Reyes, Jonathan. CNN Politics. CNN. 17 Feb 2016. Web. 30 March 2017.
Associated Press. Business Insider. 8 Mar 2016. Web. 30 March 2017.
Deb, Sopan. News. CBS News. 16 Aug 2015. Web. 30 March 2017.
Diamond, Jeremy. CNN Politics. CNN. 4 April 2016. Web. 30 March 2017.
Ewing, Walter. Economics. Immigrationimpact.com. 17 March 2016. Web. 30 March 2017.
ENG 1201 Online
3/26/17
The saying has always been “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”, as George Santayana put it. And it seems to be that President Trump may not remember much of the Ming Dynasty, which was brought to its knees because of problems internally with the dynasty. Current President, Donald Trump, made a promise during his unforgettable campaign for presidency. A promise that he would build a giant wall along the border and the United States and Mexico. Also, stating that Mexico would pay for it. Many problems stand between President Trumps promise and the wall becoming a reality. Problems like finding workers, finding the funds, or even geographical problems. Not to mention the many Americans and the government of Mexico that don’t want anything to do with this wall being built which also hurts our relationship with Mexico. President Trump building the wall on the south border of the United States will do more harm than good if it were to be built.
Part of the promise, President Trump stated that the wall was going to be built by American workers and legal citizens. Finding the workers that are legally documented to build the wall is just one of the many obstacles that make the walls future bleak. Two-thirds of construction firms in America is having trouble finding workers by themselves. Around half of the construction workers in Texas are undocumented and 14 percent lack authorization for employment in the United States. As stated by, Bloomberg. Therefore, it would be very difficult to find workers that are legally authorized to work in the United States as he had promised. It’s not just the initial building of the wall that is a problem with the workers. If the wall were to be built, then there would be an issue with workers to stay to keep up with the mainatnce of the wall. Hiring the workers to build the wall, then paying mainatnce for the wall. All on top of the very high prices of the wall.
NBC News estimates that the cost of the wall is billions of dollars. To keep up with the wall and to have close surveillance of the wall would cost tens of billions of billions of dollars. As President Trump implied that Mexico would indeed pay for the wall in full. “buildable and can be built for far less cost than people think,” Trump stated. After the wall is built the fact remains about mainatnce needs to be performed to the wall. Nobody is going to want to bring their tax dollars up to help pay for the wall. Those who perform mainatnce to the wall must be paid. Along with the items needed to keep the wall up to date would just bring the cost of the wall up more.
Which would bring me to my next point. Due to the climate and the area in which the wall is intended to be built on may make it a little more tough to do so than originally thought. Stated in The Washington Post, “The hurdles include environmental and engineering problems...”. People with farms, ranches, and others just don’t seem to want to sell their land to the government so that the massive wall can be built. Even though the ranchers and farmers as upset about immigrants using their land to cross the border, they still don’t seem to want to get rid of their land. “It’s private land, Trump just can’t go in and build his wall.” Wayne Cornelius, the director of the Mexican migration field research program at the University of California at San Diego stated to CBS News. If the wall were to be built, it wouldn’t completely prevent illegal immigrants from infiltrating our country. Drug traffickers and smugglers are digging more and more tunnels to pass underneath the fencing that already exist at the border. Building a wall won’t get rid of the tunnels, though it would not leave breaches or weakness within the fences or wall.
The Department of Homeland Security already spending millions of dollars a year to fix any breaches in the fences that exist at the borders. It is said by The Washington Post, the wall that currently exists in keeping illegal immigrants out, “building more fences is not the answer,” Department of Homeland Security Jehu Johnson states. Besides, there are some parts where the wall can’t be build due to the terrain. The border consists of mountains, in the most southern parts of New Mexico and rivers at other spots. More surveillance should be provided of throes areas. If the wall were to be built, “as the cement solidifies in those hot temperatures, the resulting wall could become weak, leaving the project at risk of literally crumbling.” As it states on CNN.com. Leaving grounds for rebuild and more repair which in turn just costing more money.
Claiming that Mexico will pay for the wall, which Trump gives an estimate of how much it would cost which is $8 billion, Trump has an assortment of idea that could potentially make Mexico pay the huge bill that the wall build. One of those plans being that he would use a federal anti-terrorism surveillance law to force Mexico to pay for it. In which he plans on threatening to prevent illegal immigrants from sending money to relatives whom still live in Mexico. CBS News reports, trumps other plan to make Mexico pay is by increasing the fees on the temporary visas that Mexican CEOs and other diplomats used to get access to enter the United States. Then increasing fees at entry points at the border between Mexico and United States. An add on to that plan is Trump placing tariffs on imports from Mexico and raising visa fees, CNN.com states. An article from CBS News states that “he has been more forceful about tariffs in his speeches – suggesting that Ford should pay a 35 percent tax parts and vehicles imported from Mexico if it continues there – Trump is more muted in the paper”.
“A wall implies that the relationship between Mexico and the United States is all about criminal interaction, nothing could be further from the truth, there’s a billion dollars a day in trade that’s going back and forth between the United States and Mexico… Anything that blocks that hurts the United States.” Eric Olson, associate director of the Latin American program at the non-partisan Wilson Center. Building the wall will hurt relationships between the United States and Mexico. With the amount of money that goes into the two countries trading with each other. Immigrationimpact.com states that roughly 6 million United States jobs are sustained by the trade Mexico and the United States hold with each other. And “More than 20 percent of all United States jobs are tied in some way to trade along the border. Along with the plan of building the wall to keep out the illegal immigrants, but to take the ones that exist in the United States and dump them on the other side of the wall. Removing undocumented immigrants would “in just two years it would shrink the labor force by 10.3 million workers and reduce real GDP by 1 trillion dollars”.
The Ming Dynasty was started by Zhu Yuanzhang, who announced himself as the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty in 1368. It followed the collapse of the Mongul led Yuan dynasty. The Monguls would continuously hound the border between their empires. Leading to the creation of the Great Wall of China by the Ming Dynasty to stop the harassment of the Monguls. Years after building the wall, the Ming Empire began to have problems with natural disasters, plagues and rebellions. The people of the Ming Empire were tortured and mistreated by Wei Zhongxian, one of the last emperors of the Ming Dynasty. No good policies were being formed, people were starving and unable to pay their taxes. Rebellions started as the fear of the people began to fade. Rebellions destroyed the Ming Empire because of power hungry rulers. The wall remains as a tourist site as many people come to see it everyday. Down the road into the future, United States could share this fate if the wall is built.
Trumps plan to build this wall may be exciting to most the population, but it is not realistic. The “legal” workers that Trump wants to hire to build it just aren’t in the playing cards. “any kind of border barrier can be climbed over, and to prevent that type of activity, we would have to have not just drones in the sky, but a lot of boots on the ground.” Olson says to NBC News. He can’t possibly find enough legal workers to help build the wall or even surveil it. Adding only to the cost of the wall and it’s mainatnce. The funding to provide these workers just doesn’t exist. Along with the funding for the wall to be built itself. Costing a couple billion dollars, Trump implies that Mexico will play for the wall. While the president of Mexico has laughed at the proposals by Trump. If Mexico doesn’t pay for the wall, Americans will not support the wall as they have. Along with these problems, there are issues with the location of the wall could keep them from building the wall in the first place. High heats causing the wall to crumble and fall.
So many different factors have to be taken into effect before the wall can be built. Too many things that would make the wall not work and not enough reasons to make it work. If the Ming Dynasty, which built the Great Wall of China to keep the Monguls out of their country, couldn’t succeed with a wall along their border. What makes Americans think that it would work in this case? Problems inside the country would erupt and cause more problems with the United States. This time, with ourselves. There is no recovering from that. We must look back at the past, specifically the Ming Dynasty, and learn from it so that indeed, history does not repeat itself. Trumps wall is being built for the same reasons as The Great Wall of China, to keep out people and other countries in general. It failed and the country fell. United States is in danger of sharing the same fate if the wall were to be built. As Wayne Cornelius stated in a Washington Post article, Trumps plan is “ludicrous… Any physical barrier can be tunneled under or climbed over or gotten around. There will always be gaps, and smugglers and migrants will seek out those gaps and go through”. Too many damages for too little of rewards means that the wall, that so many Americans and our president seek, does much harm than it does good.
Works Cited
Chuck, Elizabeth. U.S. News. NBC News. 23 Jul 2015. Web. 30 March 2017.
Markon, Jerry. Politics. The Washington Post. 17 Jul 2015. Web. 30 March 2017.
Etter, Lauren. Bloomberg. 26 Jan 2017. Web. 30 March 2017.
Carrol, Jason; Urbany, Bryce; Cummings, Julian; Pisano, Michael; Watkins, Eli; Reyes, Jonathan. CNN Politics. CNN. 17 Feb 2016. Web. 30 March 2017.
Associated Press. Business Insider. 8 Mar 2016. Web. 30 March 2017.
Deb, Sopan. News. CBS News. 16 Aug 2015. Web. 30 March 2017.
Diamond, Jeremy. CNN Politics. CNN. 4 April 2016. Web. 30 March 2017.
Ewing, Walter. Economics. Immigrationimpact.com. 17 March 2016. Web. 30 March 2017.