This a poll.
How many people do you think would be mad at Trump if he reneged on his promise to build a wall?
How many want it? Not everyone who voted for him, but lots of them for sure. It was one of his more popular asinine promises.
It’s absolutely idiotic! The vast majority of the people who cross illegally ride across in vehicles. Most do not walk through the desert; only a few do it that way.
(And ladders and ropes are a lot cheaper than a wall is! Unless every single mile is patrolled, constantly, people could get over it anyway!)
There’s a meme going around I agree with: He should just say he’s built a wall. His followers will believe him, and the rest of us will save a hell of a lot of money.
I can seriously imagine him telling us that he’d been talking about building a metaphorical wall the whole time and that only idiots would think he was being serious. And his supporters will go along with it because they won’t want anyone to think they are an idiot.
The wall is important because it is the first step towards a path to legality for all of those who are here now and allowing a more open immigration policy.
One of the biggest reasons why people oppose amnesty for illegals is that the last time it was tried in the 80s lots of people rushed across in order to take advantage of that amnesty. That combined with a lack of promised enforcement has left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths.
So step one is stop the influx of illegal immigrants and second is to deal with the ones who are already here and step three is make it easier for the good, hardworking people to come while preventing the bad guys from crossing. Step three requires that the people who come over be documented and vetted rather than just being aloud to self select for which come in.
I voted no wall, but a poll on the Dope is not going to be indicative of the country at all.
A significant percent of his voters, easily in the tens of millions.
Except the wall won’t even come close to “securing the border”. It’s a feel good measure for people who don’t understand what actually goes on at the border.
I’n confused by the poll. The OP asks how many Americans want the wall and who will be upset if it doesn’t get built, but the actual poll does not address that.
The biggest problem with a wall I can see is that it actually might create more access. There are lots of places on the southern border where, because of the terrain, you can’t access. You will have to build access roads, and remove the natural barriers to put up the wall. Then, you are going to have to dynamite the access roads when you are done, but they still might provide better access by foot then the natural terrain that was removed.
If the president wants to wall off obvious crossing places, I’m not in favor of it, but I’ll defer; however, a wall the entire expanse of the southern border is the kind of solution a middle schooler would come up with.
New national poll:
“The public opposes new spending for the wall, 58 percent to 28 percent. Nearly half say they strongly oppose funding for the project.”
Considering that something like 26% of registered voters voted for trump, it could also be true that trump voters have not changed their minds about the wall even if US taxpayers will be paying for it.
This post is cogent, reasoned, and rationally written response. It is also almost completely wrong.
Setting aside the fact that a wall of the type that Trump has described during his presidential campaign would be enormously more expensive than he claimed and impractical to maintain as well as not effectively stopping people from going over, under, or around it, the “first step toward a path to legality…and allowing a more open immigration policy” would be to reform immigration policy to make it more straightforward for people who wish to immigrate or work to obtain worker visas and immigration status. People sneak over illegally because the time and bureaucracy for immigration is prohibitive unless you already have a sponsor in the United States willing to employ and support an immigrant.
There has been plenty of enforcement of immigration; in fact, during the Obama administration deportations were at an all time high, well up from the previous administration. The reason that local law enforcement agencies don’t enforce immigration laws stringently is because a) it is inimical to obtaining cooperation with undocumented immigrants in enforcing local and state laws or performing investigations, b) it wastes effort and money that is better spent in responding to real crimes, and c) it is not their mandate.
One of the main reasons that so many people from Mexico and Latin America are “flooding” over the border to come to the United States is that as a consequence of the “War on Drugs” and resulting narcotrafficer wars many of these nations have little in the way of functional governments or economies, and extreme levels of violent crime. Encouraging people to remain in their country of origin rather than immigrate should start with helping to politically stabilize these countries and trade agreements to bolster their economies.
Immigrants from Mexico and Latin America are less likely to commit crimes and immigrants overall contribute more to the economy than they receive in benefits by a significant factor.
Nearly everything Donald Trump said about the problems and impacts of immigration was factually unfounded and hyperbolic. All Trump knows about illegal immigraion is how to use them to avoid paying union labor. And his ocean-to-gulf wall is an unabashed fantasy of ludicrous proportions that would not prevent immigration even if it could be built and paid for, which Mexico has made it unquestionably clear that they will not do.
Trump’s wall was a hollow campaign promise intended to appeal to people who believe in simplistic solutions to complex problems.
Stranger
It’s none of my business whether you build a wall or not, but what I will say is that it’s been tried in Europe last century - and it didn’t work.
Trump’s followers would believe him. But his backers expect a twenty billion dollar government contract to build a five billion dollar wall.
Just wondering how you know this. Not disbelieving, but never knew that.
There was an interview with a retired ICE (INS) officer on KNX News Radio (a CBS affiliate in Los Angeles.) He was explaining in some detail why a wall wouldn’t stop more than a very small fraction of illegal crossings.
I did some Googling to try to find another source, and, instead, found a claim that 40% of illegal immigrants arrive here legally, and simply overstay their permits. I don’t know if 40% is too high or too low, but obviously a wall would do nothing to prevent this problem.
I’m totally meh on the whole discussion by now; I’ll save my few remaining gray cells for actual immigration reform. Build it or not, I just don’t care anymore.
This. The questions in the OP and the poll are different.
It would be no different than asking Trump supports how many people do they think would be upset about defunding the NEA and then polling them about how they feel.
Of course people on this board don’t like the wall. That’s given.
I wonder how many people really want the wall.
“The Wall” itself is idiotic but it does serve a useful purpose in discourse. There are way too many people that conflate illegal and legal immigration as if they are the same thing when they aren’t at all. Some people seem genuinely shocked that people can’t just move wherever they want in the world whenever they want. No country in the world works that way. That is part of a definition of a nation.
It is fine to argue for open borders but I argue that should still be a reasoned political decision rather than a defacto state of affairs because of lax of security and political paralysis. I don’t respect people that are essentially advocating open borders without stating those intentions directly. As I have said many times, I don’t hate individual illegal immigrants. They have saved saved my ass plenty of times. I would probably do the same thing myself if I was born in some 3rd world shithole or totalitarian state but that still doesn’t make the current state acceptable.
The problem is much easier to solve than a literal wall and always has been. All you have to do is fine employers of them including household staff like maids and nannies up to prison time for executives that engage in it on a large scale. That would make the demand go away.
All of this is a smoke-screen though. The only thing that is clear is that immigration policy in the U.S. is hopelessly broken and needs to be completely revamped no matter matter what direction that takes.
Think I saw where China also tried it some time ago. Didn’t work. However the one in Berlin was pretty damn effective because people were shot at when they tried to cross into the West, but that’s not going to happen at the southern border of the US.
How effective is tunnel detection technology? I think tunneling under the border is going to increase when the wall goes up.