CNN has a poll saying more Americans are opposed to a border wall than approve it.  How many American citizens answer that question with actual data and information on the effectiveness of border walls, and how many answer it with only information they hear from the major media?  Major media means CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, big-city newspapers, and George Soros-supported websites or organizations.  Big mainstream media are overwhelmingly leftist, and that quite likely would influence people who rely on them exclusively for their news.  Let us go a little deeper than the 30-second story at the top of the hour on your AM dial.

Photo credit: Sinn Fein.

A wall or fence is old tech and does not work.  When you first hear this argument, use your knowledge and experience to evaluate it.  Do you have locks on your doors?  They're kind of old tech, aren't they?  Yes, but they still serve as a deterrent to people who want to come into your house or car uninvited.  Sometimes the locks may be bypassed, but they no doubt still will stop people from going where you don't want them to go.  It's the same way with a fence.  One of the first things done when the military set up forward operating bases in Iraq or Afghanistan was to put up fences or concrete t-walls to protect the base.  You still need sentries and other technology, but the barriers prevent most of the bad characters from gaining access and engaging in mischief.  A wall on a border works the same way.  You can figure that out without listening to a CNN report that may likely be slanted.

Recently, Hungary and Israel have built fences or walls along their borders to prevent illegal entry into their countries.  This article by Matt Palumbo includes charts showing the effectiveness of those projects.  After the fence was built in Hungary, the number of illegal aliens captured dropped from the thousands to near zero.  You can also see how the Israeli wall helped lower terror-related deaths from a high of over 180 in 2002 to fewer than ten a year more recently.  In addition to that, Palumbo points out that Austria, Kenya, Jordan, Spain, Greece, Norway, Slovenia, Macedonia, Gibraltar, Myanmar, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Oman, Algeria, Ukraine, Tunisia, Hungary, and Morocco have built, fortified, or expanded border barriers since 2010.  If walls and barriers don't work, why would so many different countries be building them?  

What do the people on the ground say about the effectiveness of a wall?  Mark Morgan was Border Patrol chief during the Obama administration.  He says in this article from WJLJ in Washington, D.C. that the wall works.  U.S. Customs and Border Protection has a video posted at its website explaining how walls work, as if someone actually needs to have it explained.  Even Democrat House majority leader Steny Hoyer agrees that walls work.    

Another argument against the wall is that it's expensive.  It's good to see at least one of our major political parties is concerned with budgetary restraint.  I suggest that Democrats' concern for overspending be directed at things that do not enhance our national and personal security, such as some of the billions of dollars of programs pointed out in this Heritage Foundation report. 

The total cost of a wall-fence-barrier has been estimated to be as high as 25 billion dollars.  One of the most extreme claims projects that it could cost upwards of $67 billion.  The Federation for American Immigration Reform did a comprehensive study in 2017 and put the annual federal cost of illegal aliens for the taxpayer at over 30 billion dollars a year.  (That's only federal spending.  When you add in state and local costs, the number jumps to more than 115 billion a year.)  With those figures, it's clear that the savings that would be achieved by reducing the illegal alien population would pay for the wall-fence-barrier in a reasonably short time frame.

There is debate on whether illegal immigration has a deleterious effect on wages.  You can find studies that contend that it does and other studies that declare that it doesn't.  But pull back from the reports for a minute.  If you are looking for a job, and all of a sudden, there are ten more applicants for that job, many of whom are willing to work for lower wages, do you think that will inhibit your chances of getting the job?  Talk to people in construction, in particular, and see what conclusions you can draw. 

The previously cited Federation for American Immigration Reform study includes 1.2 billion dollars to incarcerate illegal aliens who are in the federal prison system.  I double-checked that and came up with the same figure.  The number of federal prisoners who are illegal aliens is estimated to be around 35,303 (37,557 confirmed alien prisoners x 94% of whom are illegally present in the country).  At an annual cost of $36,299.25 per year for each federal prisoner, the total annual cost of illegal immigration for the federal prison system is over 1.2 billion dollars. 

This brings us to a more personal level.  For each crime, there is a victim.  At least 35,303 people have been victimized by illegal aliens.  This is only the federal figure and does not include state and local offenses.  The first priority of a government is to provide both citizens and foreigners safety and security in their persons and their possessions.  For every high-profile crime committed by an illegal alien such as Kate Steinle and Ronil Singh, there are thousands of others – most of which will not be reported by the major news media, hence many of the 54% who oppose a wall will not be aware of them.  Whether or not illegal aliens commit crimes at a lower or higher rate than the citizen population is really not an issue when we have such large numbers of confirmed illegal alien crimes perpetrated. 

It would be interesting to see if the majority who disapprove of a border wall would have the same opinion after they had been presented with the data discussed here.  Whether the concern is effectiveness, affordability, or safety and security for legal residents, the evidence leans heavily in favor of constructing a border wall.

One more thing.  Knowing the crimes that have been committed and knowing that thousands of people have become victims of illegal alien crime, is it a fair question to ask, "Is opposing the construction of a border wall immoral?"