Illegal Immigration

[Yonadav]

I don't follow your reasoning. It is pretty much a given that Democrats and Republicans will negotiate immigration quotas. That actually has nothing to do with the wall, since quotas will be negotiated with or without the wall. So you are suggesting that Dems should give money for the wall in exchange for nothing, since quotas will be negotiated with or without a wall. Further, quotas and asylum are different things. We have a quota for immigrants who have the necessary skills (or the necessary relatives) that qualify them for immigration. In addition to that, we accept those who qualify for asylum. The first is accepting 'desirable' immigrants. The second is accepting immigrants for humanitarian reasons. The quota applies to the first category. The second category is additional immigrants.

So the issue is mainly that the Trump administration wants to block requests for asylum by hindering prospective asylum seeker from the opportunity to officially request it, and the administration is also attempting to change the grounds under which a prospective immigrant can qualify for asylum. For example, the administration is attempting to remove those from eligibility who aren't specifically being persecuted by their government in their country of origin. So a prospective immigrant might come from a country in which narco-terrorists are burning down villages, raping the women, killing the men, and forcibly recruiting the boys, and yet those villagers will not qualify for asylum because they are not being persecuted by government officials. This definition would remove pretty much all people south of our border from refugee status.

Further, there is no reason to fund building the wall, even if we wanted to stop asylum seekers, when there is no reason to believe that a wall would effectively stop them. A wall just isn't that much of an obstacle. Its cost to benefit analysis just isn't very promising. It is a dog of an investment.

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I agree that the wall is one hundred percent a political symbol. And it is probably symbolic of racism. It is certainly symbolic of nativism.

The administration isn't changing the qualifications for those seeking asylum.  I'm just gonna lay this here from the wiki page on US asylum:

The United States recognizes the right of asylum for individuals as specified by international and federal law.[1] A specified number of legally defined refugees who either apply for asylum from inside the U.S. or apply for refugee status from outside the U.S., are admitted annually. Refugees compose about one-tenth of the total annual immigration to the United States, though some large refugee populations are very prominent. Since World War II, more refugees have found homes in the U.S. than any other nation and more than two million refugees have arrived in the U.S. since 1980. In the years 2005 through 2007, the number of asylum seekers accepted into the U.S. was about 40,000 per year. This compared with about 30,000 per year in the UK and 25,000 in Canada. The U.S. accounted for about 10% of all asylum-seeker acceptances in the OECD countries in 1998-2007.[2] The United States is by far the most populous OECD country and receives fewer than the average number of refugees per capita: In 2010-14 (before the massive migrant surge in Europe in 2015) it ranked 28 of 43 industrialized countries reviewed by UNHCR.[3]

Asylum has two basic requirements. First, an asylum applicant must establish that he or she fears persecution in their home country.[4] Second, the applicant must prove that he or she would be persecuted on account of one of five protected grounds: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or particular social group.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asylum_in_...ted_States

There's not even really a dip in the amount of asylum seekers we let into the country each year.  It's stayed pretty steady even throughout Trump's administration.

You are right that a wall is not much of an obstacle, but that's not it's only purpose.  The lock on the outside of most peoples houses is not much of an obstacle either.  It can be easily picked, removed, destroyed, or the door can even be kicked in.  It works along the principle that criminals look for easy targets.  That's why burglars look for unlocked houses, it's why scammers target old people, and it's why muggers target tourists.  The wall won't be a complete 100% deterrent, but in all reality how many people do you think would even be fit enough to climb it.  And those that are fit enough, how many would risk it?  It purpose is meant to funnel people towards point of entry or at the very least areas with increased border security where anyone entering the country illegally can be picked up with relative ease.  And ultimately, if you the walls are not easily scalable, and all other entry points are heavily scrutinized, a lot of people may not bother trying to enter the country illegally.  Instead they'll have to enter through legal channels which is what we want.

I went searching for a very good article that I read a few months ago which detailed one of the changes that Jeff Sessions was attempting to make to the definition of 'credible fear'. He wanted to change it so that the fear specifically had to be fear of the government in a prospective immigrants home country. I have not been able to locate that article. I apologize for that, and hope to come up with it in the near future.

The wall really will be a very, very small obstacle.  We are talking about people who are willing to risk their lives following 'coyotes' on life threatening treks through the desert. Quite a few of them die doing this. Compared to that, the wall is just a little hill that they have to get over, under, through, or around. They are going to do it.  Seriously, the cost to benefit analysis of the wall is really horrible. The benefit is close to zero. The cost isn't really known aside from being many billions to build and billions more to maintain. We have bridges that are falling down. I would rather spend the money on bridges. The cost to benefit analysis on most of them is fantastic.