Trump's Big, Beautiful Wall Just Another GOP Empty Promise

That big, beautiful wall with its big beautiful door that Donald Trump planned to build along the Mexican border is apparently just another mirage, as are most promises from Trump. Unwilling to put forward a stand-alone bill that would actually fund the big, beautiful wall, the Trump transition and Congress is just looking at additional funding to improve the already existing 700 mile long border fence.

Trump does have a big, beautiful plan to get Mexico to pay for the improved border fence, but that will only happen after US taxpayers have actually paid for the upgrades. If you have a feeling that this will be another one of those promises that Trump leaves for later, meaning never, you would probably be correct. The plan is to keep non-citizens from wiring money outside of the US. This would prompt an immediate protest from Mexico which relies on the supposed $24 billion in remittances it receives from people living in the US. Of course, that $24 billion also consists of remittances from legal US residents which makes it another classic Trump "misstatement". When Mexico protests (presumably other countries would as well), Trump will tell them he will allow the remittances to continue only if Mexico agrees to pay for the big, beautiful wall. If that doesn't work, (which it won't), Trump threatens to impose tariffs on Mexican goods, cancel visas, and/or increase visa fees from Mexico in order to get them to pay for the big beautiful wall. The former simply does not recognize the economic reality of today's world, where production of a product actually takes place in multiple countries before the final product is assembled and sold. The latter two threats are virtually meaningless - Mexicans would just stop visiting, hurting US agriculture and other industries that rely on cheap immigrant labor.

As Kevin Drum points out, if you really want to cut down on illegal immigration in this country, then you need to crack down on businesses who hire illegal immigrants. That would perhaps include large fines or prison time for businesses that ignore the requirements of whatever proof of employment eligibility the law requires, such as E-Verify. Of course, to actually do this would put Republicans at odds with their real constituency, which is business and the rich. Those groups love having a nice pool of undocumented workers so that they can keep their costs down and abuse them with unpaid overtime. According to the LA Times Wayne Cornelius, "In 2014, the probability that one of the nation’s 6 million employers would be investigated for violating immigration laws was 0.03%." Right now, employers have very little reason to fear they will be discovered violating immigration laws and the penalties for doing so, even if they were discovered, are not penal. So there is every incentive for employers to cheat. And Republicans are not going to do a thing to change that. For those illegal immigrants that remain here and have built families and roots, the solution is to bring them into the legal fold by offering some kind of working rights. The reality is that most of them have jobs already.

The GOP have become masters at political theatre. They identify a problem to inflame the voting populace but their solutions are always chimeras, magical shiny objects that will never become reality and never really address the problem anyway. "Repeal and Replace" is a classic example and Trump is certainly the grandmaster of the game. It is a wonderful device when you don't have power. The real question is whether they can continue to pull it off when they are actually held responsible for governing.