It is not the debate about the infamous WALL! that rankles me. It is the low quality of the debate. The saloon-at-closing-time level of it.

Rasmussen polling tells us THE WALL! and illegal immigration are now the top issues on American plates. You would think this would make them worthy of a decent debate.  Yet our political leaders and influence peddlers build their case against the wall on foundations of marshmallow.

For instance, they insist the wall is too expensive. They could hardly find a weaker argument. The entire wall will cost about $25 billion. Over many years. Probably less than $3 billion per year.

This is expensive? Over the 10 years of wall-building the Defense Budget will eat up at least $10 trillion. The federal budget will run to probably $80 trillion. Too expensive? Defense wastes more in a month than the wall will cost each year.

Meanwhile, we spend far more money on welfare benefits for illegals. More than the wall would cost. Our Census Bureau says 63 percent of our non-citizens are on some form of welfare. (Nearly 5 million families.)  This is nearly twice the rate of citizens on welfare. It gets worse, the longer the non-citizens stay. About 70 percent of those here 10 years receive welfare benefits. Our congressguys don’t vote against these bloated payments. They don’t claim they are too expensive.

Another illogical argument against THE WALL! is that it won’t work. It won’t stop people from walking across our southern border. Walls don’t work, they insist.

The Israelis disagree.  Their wall on their border with Egypt works.  It totally staunched the torrent of illegals from the Sudan and elsewhere. The Jordanians praise their border wall. They claim it works. So do the Tunisians. So do the Americans. Those who live near Yuma. Those who live near the San Diego-Tijuana border. Walls work well in these areas. Ask the folks. Before a wall appeared, border police nabbed 200,000 per year in the Tijuana area. The number fell to 2000 after the wall.

Well, THE WALL! is immoral. Multiple politicians tell us so. Really? Why is our wall immoral while those in the countries listed above are not? Congress voted the foreign aid to pay for them. By the way, the impoverished, frightened Sudanese want to sneak into Israel for the same reasons people from central America want to sneak into the U.S.

On that subject, politicians figure we are duhhhhmb. Most of the big Dems who fight against THE WALL! today voted for walls a few years ago. They did! Schumer and Feinstein and Boxer and Biden and Hillary and Obama when he was a senator. They voted to secure our southern border with various barriers, including walls.

Also, they did not object to the 700 miles of wall that we have built since 2006. Why do they fight against more wall now when they were happy with previous wall?

Among the marshmallow-based arguments against THE WALL! is that Trump invented a border crisis in order to get his wall.  There is no crisis, some pols tell us.  In November we had probably 52,000 illegal arrivals. So our border people estimate. At least 600,000 people will sneak across our border this year, they tell us. Trump did not invent these illegals.

Some of the worst baloney our leaders spew on this subject is about “comprehensive border security”. Whatever that is, it does not include walls, barriers, etc. I guess our border agents are supposed to bullhorn messages to illegals. “Hey, hombres. You can’t sneak across the border there because we have comprehensive border security!”  That’ll stop ‘em.

Other baloney comes from those who argue over the height of any wall.  Anything over a certain height is immoral. And materials are important to some idiots. To them, wire is okay, concrete no. If the illegals cannot see what or who awaits them on the other side, the wall is immoral.

One politician declared that $5 billion on THE WALL! would be a waste.  Why?  Because scanners that would examine every vehicle at border crossings would cost only $300 million. Uhhhh, sir…we don’t happen to have official border crossings out there where THE WALL would be built.

As writer-historian Victor Davis Hansen suggested, the wall haters don’t really believe the wall would not work. They fear “…that it would work only too well.”

PS: I like the idea put forward by congressmen Cruz and Sensenbrenner: Build THE WALL! and pay for it with assets we seize from Mexican drug lords. We grabbed $16 billion from the villain “El Chapo” alone.

We deserve a healthy debate on this important subject. Thus far, we’ve heard anemic.

From Tom…as in Morgan.  

Find Tom on Facebook. You can write to Tom at tomasinmorgan@yahoo.com.