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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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Nobody wants to spend the exorbitant sums it would require to actually physically secure the southern border.

Are they really that exorbitant? The US could secure a much shorter southern Mexican border, or the even shorter southern Guatemalan border. The latter is just 459km vs 3145km between the US and Mexico, almost seven times shorter.

They’re probably not the exorbitant. For comparison , Israel used to face a similar issue with it’s Egypt border, where African economic migrants would just stroll in. We built a fence. The border is roughly 125 miles long, in a desert area. The US-Mexico border is about 2000 miles long, so it’s about a 1:16 length ratio. The population ratio between Israel and the US is about 1:37, and the gdp ratio is about 47. Fudge a little for the US border being more remote in some places, but it’s clear that y’all can totally afford a border fence.

A decent chunk of the US-Mexico border is not passable anyways, so the remoteness probably cancels out.

The real barrier is just Israel being willing to do things the west won’t.