When NYC wants to build a tunnel, it costs $3.5 billion per mile in pre-Biden money. See “The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth” (NYT, 2017).
Here’s a recent tweet from the IDF:
At NYC prices, the 2.5-mile tunnel network would have cost nearly $9 billion to construct and we can be pretty sure that the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) did not spend anywhere near that much. This part of the video (made by Hamas) may show construction techniques:
For those who object on the grounds that Hamas and PIJ have some anti-Jewish attitudes, to judge by recent street demonstrations and domestic jihad efforts, NYC is already home to plenty of folks who want to see Israel destroyed. See, for example, How was the immigration of Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov supposed to benefit native-born Americans? and How was the immigration of Akayed Ullah supposed to benefit native-born Americans? Also, this October 8 celebration of the October 7 attacks:
Another idea for saving money and improving performance: hire Egyptians to guard the U.S. border. There are plenty of people who’d like to leave Gaza right now, I’m sure, yet the Egyptians have managed to keep them from entering Egypt via a combination of fence/wall and personnel. The U.S. has a track record of demonstrated failure in border control (hassling international airline passengers whose passports were already checked twice on departure doesn’t count, in my view). Why not replace our border patrol with Egyptian contractors and let an Egyptian company build the non-wall wall that the Biden administration is building?
Egyptians at work on their border wall:
Impressive that the NY subway allows contactless credit cards to be used as tickets while BARF still requires buying a card for an ever increasing fee & computing your expected fare. 1 difference is BARF charges a variable fare upon exit while NY charges a fixed fare upon entry. They could buffer all the credit card numbers until exit but maybe the limitation is in the contactless algorithm itself.
Of course Hamas didn’t spend that much, but how can we get the UN and international community to pay for the NY subway also?
The better question is, why is the UN keeps on donating to Palestinians (e.g. Hamas) when they know the money is being spent on Hamas?
Spain depends on Morocco to keep migrants from entering Melilla and Ceuta (Spanish enclaves in Africa). That arrangement is not free of problems.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/27/moroccan-authorities-accused-of-trying-to-cover-up-melilla-deaths
Thanks for that article. I wonder why the Spanish want to hold onto these African toeholds. Maybe they had positive value before the modern immigration-asylum system and modern welfare state. The Guardian article is interesting for the different perspectives from those who get a paycheck from the asylum-industrial complex and those who paying for each new immigrant:
Jude Sunderland, of Human Rights Watch, said: “It is shocking that Moroccan authorities are reportedly preparing to hastily bury the men who died. They should spare no effort to identify the bodies and to preserve them in a dignified and appropriate way to allow for autopsies and verification of cause of death. This is crucial to ensure a full investigation into what happened. It is also incumbent on Morocco to organise transfer of the deceased to their families for burials in accordance with their wishes.”
Sunderland added: “These were horrifying deaths, the scenes from Melilla are downright dystopian, exemplifying everything that is unconscionable about Spain and the EU’s approach to migrants and refugees, particularly if they are Black or brown.”
Spain’s president, Pedro Sánchez, has been criticised for failing to condemn the Moroccan police’s violent response to the attempted incursion, preferring to lay the blame at the door of “the international mafias who organise these violent attacks”.
Something to consider for those who think building a fence will solve the problem of illegal immigration from Mexico to the US. The border fence of Melilla is hard to cross, it is only 7 miles long, and still lots of migrants manage to get to Melilla (and the EU). How is that going to work in the case of a wall hundreds of miles long?
The East Germans made a lot of effort with their Berlin border wall in its various versions. To the (large) extent that modern equivalents of the measures deployed there are considered unacceptable or impractical, a land border will always be more porous.
Anon: I didn’t meant to suggest that a fence (not a “wall”!) by itself would prevent people from crossing into the Land of Infinite Means-Tested Benefits (not to be confused with “welfare”) and then soaking up $100,000 per year per household in taxpayer funds for 4 generations (it was $60,000/year in pre-Biden money; see https://www.budget.senate.gov/newsroom/budget-background/america-spent-enough-on-federal-welfare-last-year-to-send-60-000-to-each-household-in-poverty (2013))
There would have to be Egyptian border guards on our side of the border and we would have to pay the Mexicans to patrol their side (and fund the Mexicans’ costs of deportation; right now, it is much cheaper for Mexico to let someone from India or Africa, for example, through the U.S. border than to fly him/her/zir/them back to India or Africa; Panamanian officials make the same point to the walkers described in https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2023/02/27/book-review-walking-the-americas/ … why should they buy a $2000 plane ticket to the other side of the planet for a migrant who wants to reach the U.S. when they can just help him/her/zir/them to get to the border with Costa Rica and onward to the Land of Generosity?).
As a big picture item, the U.S. would also have to eliminate its policy of granting asylum. A sovereign nation isn’t forever bound by a policy decision made in the 1950s. We can simply say “this doesn’t make sense in the current globalized economy”. Filling up a country with humans who, by design, have no affinity for that country (only a dislike/hatred/fear of their old country) is incompatible with democracy (since the citizens produced via this process have nothing in common other than disliking where they used to live). It also doesn’t make sense from an economic point of view. Consider the best surgeon in Switzerland, age 40 and fluent in English. He/she/ze/they has no right to come to the U.S. and practice medicine. Maybe the surgeon could be brought over by an employer via an elaborate bureaucratic process, but there is no guarantee that it would work. By contrast, consider an 80-year-old who can’t speak English, has no work skills, and needs $2 million of near-emergency medical care. The 80-year-old has an actual right to stay in the U.S. indefinitely, receiving that $2 million of medical care at taxpayer expense, as soon as a asylum tale is uttered. Since 2021, the tale could be as simple as “I don’t feel safe at home” (see https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/16/asylum-standards-biden-494918 ).
> As a big picture item, the U.S. would also have to eliminate its policy of granting asylum …
Exactly. No wall will stop migrant if we don’t have hard policy in place to send them back. And for the US, we don’t have to fly migrant back to their homeland, we can simply buss them back to the Mexico boarder and let them be on their own. Do this few times and see how the migrant issue solves itself. But of course, human rights liberals will cry out loud that the US is being unhuman. Almost every country is now turning migrants back, except the US.
There are folks who want to migrate to the US, legally, who have been on visa waiting list for over 15 years. Our boarder policy and how we treat illegal migrants, is a slap on the faces of those honest migrant.
I think it would be unfair to dump asylum-seekers on Mexico. After all, Mexico did not create a work-optional society in which anyone who refrains from work can live at taxpayer expense for 4 generations or more and, then, invite everyone everywhere on the planet to come and avail themselves of these entitlements. It is the comprehensive welfare states that have the big floods of migrants. Mexico, by contrast, is a work-oriented society.
> I think it would be unfair to dump asylum-seekers on Mexico.
Not fair? I would agree with you only if Mexico wasn’t making it really easy [1] for migrants to cross into Mexico.
“But visa numbers increased sharply in the last month as authorities issued them to anyone who asked, according to local humanitarian groups. Instead of detaining migrants without proper documents, as had been the usual practice, migration authorities directed them to a park on the edge of Tapachula to start the visa process.”
More at that link. In summary, a huge change in the way Mexico dealt with migrant when dictator Trump was in office.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/10/world/americas/mexico-migrants-us-border.html
The general approach everywhere concerning migrants is “welcome as long as you don’t stay”. Most places affected by the massive arrival of migrants try to get rid of them as fast as they can. “Go to X, it is grey and dark, but their social services are fantastic. Feel free to smoke on the flight there, the crew is not going to bother you.”
https://www.npr.org/2023/09/28/1201785102/lampedusa-italy-migrant-crisis-meloni
Anon: Thanks for the link. We are informed by Democrats that low-skill migrants make a place vastly wealthier and benefit the natives. Eric Adams in NYC is an exception to this rule, but can be ignored for now. I wonder if migrants also make a migrated-through country or island wealthier. Migrants will buy food, shelter, and transportation while traveling through. If migrants are destitute, an army of do-gooders will descend on the locale to help them and the do-gooders will pay for food, shelter, transportation, etc. It’s perhaps not as good as attracting climate change activists in their Gulfstreams, but a lot of parts of the world cannot hope to host elite tourists. A migrant who spends $1,000 boosts the economy by $1,000 and then leaves to become a ward of the U.S. or German taxpayer.
@philg unskilled immigration makes politicians more influential and real-estate-owners and employers vastly wealthier. (and, I suppose, do-gooders gooder) So, what’s not to like? The traditional champions of workers see a bunch of potential new clients/constituents, so don’t expect them to do much; the masses aren’t going to immiserate themselves!)