As I write this, 2pm on Saturday, December 29, 2018, parts of the US Government are still shutdown from since December 22 due to not passing a Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund all of the government, that includes funds for a border wall with Mexico. While the House of Representatives did pass a CR with some border wall funds, there has been no vote in the Senate, plus the President has said that he would not sign any bill that did not have the border wall funds of around $5 billion. At the moment, it does not even look or sound like there are any negotiations even going on to resolve the impasse between the administration and Congress.
While this has all been going on, it occurred to me that maybe a better use of boarder wall funds would be a program of development for the areas of Mexico that are next to the border with the US so that people would be able to find work in Mexico and not want and/or need to somehow get into the United States to survive. A border wall with Mexico, if and when built, will not really do much to help anyone get a job or develop anything and even cost money to maintain for the decades to come. Economic development on the border areas has the possibility of making the areas in Mexico much better off than they are now, and the program could even turn some kind of a profit if done properly. In some quick research on the internet, it looks like the cost of a border wall is on the order of about $21 billion USD and expected to take 3.5 years, but some sources seem to think the total boarder wall would be around $75 billion USD in total.
It seems that with all of the money spent on various government programs, that maybe spending $20 billion per year to improve the areas of Mexico that boarder the United States would be a good program to try. The hope is that at some point people arriving in Mexico or in Mexico would be able to make a decent living in those areas, plus maybe once the areas are improved there would be demand for good and services from the United States to those areas at some point. I also expect that spending money in Mexico to improve the areas in Mexico would get a lot more purchasing power and benefit from the money than building a boarder wall with much more expensive labor and material sourced from the US side.
While this may all take a while to see how it works out, I expect the end results would be worth the effort and settle the arguments on the issue instead of having the current budget and legislative grid lock with nothing getting done by anyone.
Good Luck and Take Care,
Louis J. Desy Jr.
LouisDesyjr@gmail.com
Saturday, December 29, 2018
