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There is simply no way to make law-enforcement and courts revenue-neutral institution, since these penalties are only paid by those who are actually caught and convicted, and imprisoned.
If you can find me any instance where prosecution of particular crimes creates a revenue windfall for the state I'd love to see it.
Point being, Floridians may be willing to spend the money, but as a purely practical matter, choose not to unless it is likely to actually solve the problem.
Do you disagree with the assessment that building a big ol' wall would offer a lasting solution to the problem it is stated to solve?
Similar tactics have worked in other countries.
Do you see why imposing a solution that actually solves the stated problem might be strictly superior to one that only mitigates the problem for the time being?
That is, if you were offered the option to spend $5 million once to cure cancer, or spend $500,000 per year to treat cancer patients and reduce the death rate, which should you pick?
Explain how else the anti-illegal immigration can get their policies even considered by the side that pays almost no cost for illegal immigration and thus has no incentive to resolve it?
I believe it will mitigate illegal immigration and employment of illegal immigrants to approximately the same extent it mitigates the distribution and consumption of illegal drugs.
Florida arrests approximately 120,000 people per year for drug offenses.
And clearly, drugs still come into Florida, people still use them, and continue to get arrested for them, year after year after year.
Explain why your proposed solution will not be subject to the same outcome. Illegal immigrants continue to come into Florida, people continue to hire them, so the result is just thousands of arrests per year, every year, forever.
You seem to be assuming 1) the wall will not have ongoing costs but will be perfectly effective, and 2) the expense of actually enforcing the law will not decrease after some employers are destroyed and some companies are bankrupted. Those don't like reasonable assumptions to me.
I think legal business owners, small and otherwise, are generally more rational that drug dealers. If the punishment vs payoff curve is correctly designed, they will respond more like rational actors. Do you disagree?
They will not come if they can't find work.
Sure.
I also think it is functionally impossible to "correctly design" a payoff curve.
This is something that is beyond the capabilities of modern political science, despite what experts and pundits may believe. Too many variables, and there is substantial incentive to cheat or otherwise thwart the law.
Politically speaking, the incentive to insert carveouts, exceptions, and other incentives is also massive.
The nice thing about a big, dumb wall is that the engineering aspect is well understood. You just build it.
All I'm saying is that as a proposed solution I think the wall is much more likely to achieve the stated goals, at a lower cost (including ongoing cost) and isn't dependent as much on the 'rational' behavior of employers and immigrants.
Hence, why this solution has been used by many countries to much success.
You can certainly convince me that the tradeoffs or second order effects aren't worth it!
I mean, if you're already arguing that employers will be destroyed and companies bankrupted, you're saying that a substantial economic cost is a good thing?
So are we agreeing that another benefit of a wall is that it doesn't require destroying employers and bankrupting companies to build it?
They will not come if a fifty-foot-tall barrier physically obstructs their route.
Unless the barrier proves trivial to breach or surmount. Or they enter on a legitimate visa and never leave.
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And then our agricultural system falls apart, wohoo
I believe the solution to that was to add a big beautiful door to allow the ones you need to come through.
The big, beautiful door was to be for legal immigrants, who will have been vetted and are not cartel members, who will swear allegiance to the USA. Sounds exactly like “the ones we need”.
A massively expanded and streamlined visas system for Latin American workers would likely soak up an enormous share of illegal entrants. However, I don't see much support for this on the right.
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