America’s border with Canada is much longer than its border with Mexico. And Canada is not the source of much illegal immigration or fentanyl. But Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy wants to build a border wall at the US-Canada border, even though that could cost $80 billion. The BBC reports:
Since Donald Trump’s presidency, the construction of an impenetrable wall at the US-Mexico border has become a common refrain among conservative politicians.
But one Republican presidential hopeful, Vivek Ramaswamy, wants to take the idea even further. His proposal: A wall along the 5,500 mile long (8,900km) US-Canada frontier.
At Wednesday’s primary debate in Miami, the 38-year-old candidate argued that enough fentanyl crossed the border last year to “kill three million Americans”.
His calls to tackle the trade by building a colossal border wall were quickly panned by experts.
On stage at the presidential debate, Mr Ramaswamy claimed that the US should “build both walls” to stop the flow of drugs into the US….the scale of fentanyl trafficking along the US-Canada border – the world’s longest – pales in comparison to the US-Mexico border….
Just under two and a half pounds – about a kilogram – of fentanyl was seized at the Canadian border in the 2023 fiscal year. The figure represents well under 1% of the 26,718 lbs (12,119kg) of fentanyl seized at the southern border during the same timeframe.
The previous fiscal year, the figures stood at 14lbs (6.3kg) along the Canadian border, compared to 14,104 lbs (6,397kg) along the US-Mexican border….
“You can’t compare the borders… when he said that yesterday, I kind of laughed,” Dr Frederick Gagnon, an expert on US-Canada relations at the University of Québec in Montreal, told the BBC. … Even Donald Trump, for whom border security was and remains a key policy platform, dismissed the idea, telling Telemundo in an interview that the US-Canada border is a “massively long piece” and “not our big problem”.
Since most recent illegal migrants come either from Central America or from third world countries whose citizens travel through Central America on their way to the U.S., the best place for a border wall might be between Mexico and its Central American neighbors, such as Guatemala, which most recent illegal immigrants to the U.S. now pass through at one point in their journey to the U.S.
The border between Mexico and its southern neighbors in Central America — Guatemala & Belize — is very short compared to the U.S.-Mexico border (less than 700 miles long, unlike the U.S.-Mexico border, which is 1954 miles long), and incredibly short compared to the U.S.-Canada border (5500 miles long).
So that would be the cheapest place to build a border wall, costing many billions of dollars less than a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
Mexico does not want illegal immigration from Central America, either. It is much harsher on illegal immigrants from Central America than America is, jailing some illegal immigrants and denying illegal immigrant children access to school.
Mexico is much richer than Central American countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, countries that have a much higher percentage of their citizens who want to emigrate to the U.S. It also does not want illegal immigrants from these countries.
So if we paid Mexico to build a border wall with Guatemala & Belize, maybe it would be happy to build one, which would keep Central American migrants out of the U.S., and also keep out African migrants who currently travel by air to Guatemala and then join caravans that travel from Guatemala across Mexico to the United States.
