Trump be able to fulfill his wall proposal?

Miski Ahmed

On a hot July day, Trump announced his plan build a wall that stretches 1,000 miles across the U.S./Mexican border.

Months later, Trump said that Mexico will pay for the expensive $5 to $10 billion price tag, while convincing his supporters that none of the American taxpayers’ money would be going towards the wall.

Fast forward to today, about a month since the presidential inauguration. So far Trump’s wall proposal has been stopped due to Mexico’s President, Enrique Peña Nieto, who said that the country would not pay for the project.

But the big question is how Trump would build the wall, and if Mexico would eventually reimburse the United States for construction costs costs.

Professor Richard Mansbach works in the political science department here at Iowa State. When he first heard of the wall, he believed it was absurd; however, believes it is part of the larger view of not just immigration, but trade as well.

That is the core idea of many emerging populists and anti-globalization leaders. While he believes Trump is not alone on the issue, however, Mansbach does believe Trump’s proposal on the border wall is more on the extreme side. Mansbach gave many examples of other countries proposing restrictions on immigration.

“We see it in as will in British Brexit for the European Union, which the excuse for which was largely immigration from Europe,” he said.

Also, he stated we see it in the emerges of the populist party with a real chance of coming into power, the right-wing party in France, Netherlands and Eastern Europe.

When asked why there’s a growing number of anti-globalists that have been seeing in, not just in Europe but in America as well. Mansbach explained that globalization is about the movement of people, trade and jobs.

Usually, people that are supporting on Trump’s wall are mostly blue-collar, working class males that have relatively limited skills who for many decades after the industrial revolution enjoyed high paying quality income jobs in the factories, now find themselves unsuited or not needed for the new skills or education for the more technical advance demanded jobs here in the U.S.

In most cases, these people are too old to be trained in the new, fast-paced technological world we have today.

Mansbach gave an example of those unneeded workers that feel left behind with the coal miners in West Virginia.

“Coal it’s dirty. It’s environmentally destructive, and so both public officials and private corporations are trying to find substitutions for coal and are succeeding,” he said. 

Mansbach pointed out that this leaves many long generations of miners without any way of supporting their families, seen mining is a relativity unskilled job to do.

I stopped reading here – David


Which plays into the fear of immigrants taking away jobs from these unskilled American, in this case Mansbach believe is false he stated that most immigrant take jobs that most “indigenous people” would not take like caretaking, agriculture, and more backbreaking jobs.

The second reason is the majority of immigrants pay taxes which help fund the older American needs like Social Security and Medicaid.

For Professor Steffen Schmidt, also strongly believe the Wall is a very unlikely thing that Trump will fulfill “and is no more effective to stop undocumented, illegal entries the tenth USA than the current fence and human patrolling So, the wall is a metaphor for stopping unauthorized entry nothing more.”

Professor Schmidt also stated that Mexico is not responsible for people being attracted to the U.S for many reasons mostly to seek economic prosperity.

Also, believe that if Trump would give trade tariffs against Mexico will simply hurt the U.S economy, because Mexico can simply shift American products and services with another country specifically corn to country that grows corn too like Argentina and Brazil “Iowa exports a very large percentage of its corn to Mexico so it’s very dangerous for Iowa corn farmers.”

Which Schmidt believe will hurt states like Iowa and Nebraska economy of agriculture seen they heavily depend on Mexico’s purchase of their products.

He later explains that both “Both democrats and Republican are going to strongly resist the build the wall & Mexico pays strategy of Mr. trump. My contacts and expert friends say “This is a no starter. It’s dead on arrival.”

With each day pass by Trump’s plans on the Wall, it seems that there are not any good solutions in building a wall and while making Mexico pay for it. As noted with both Professors, with the notion of immigrants taking jobs for Americans, growing anti-globalist groups.

And the thought of Mexico cutting trade ties with the U.S. but in the end, the plan might greatly affect the economy for the U.S and not as well as the president and those that support it have imagined.