President Trump has been saying all along that Mexico would pay for the wall and a new study has found that the controversial barrier could cover its own cost… and Mexico would, in essence, be the benefactor.
That’s the finding of recent immigration studies showing the $18 billion wall the president plans to build along the southern border would pay for itself by stopping the importation of not only crime and drugs, but poverty.
“The wall could pay for itself even if it only modestly reduced illegal crossings and drug smuggling,” Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Post.
If a wall stopped just 200,000 of those future crossings, Camarota says, it would pay for itself in fiscal savings from welfare, public education, refundable tax credits and other benefits currently given to low-income, illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America.
If a wall stopped 50 percent of those expected crossings, he says, it would save American taxpayers a whopping $64 BILLION – almost four times the wall’s cost – to say nothing of the additional billions in federal savings from reduced federal drug interdiction and border-security enforcement, The Post reported.
Fox News reports:
With President Donald Trump set to visit San Diego on Tuesday to inspect the eight border wall prototypes that have been built, a new study has found that the controversial barrier could cover its own cost.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the $18 billion wall will pay for itself by curbing the importation of crime, drugs and illegal immigrants who tend to go on the federal dole.
On “Fox & Friends First” on Monday, Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said many illegal aliens enter the U.S. to take advantage of taxpayer-funded social programs like welfare and public education.
“When you look at what a wall will do in allowing us to apprehend the vast majority of those individuals that are coming across the border, it will cut down on how much the taxpayer burden will be, which then will go straight into funding the wall,” Judd explained.
Judd said many other think tanks and research organizations agree with the Center for Immigration Studies’ conclusion that cutting down on the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. would save taxpayers billions of dollars.
“It’s a brilliant way to go about it. And that’s the business strategy that President Trump brings to the American people,” Judd said.
