Wall Builders

            My VIPs for this week are the many people coming up with ideas to help President Donald Trump to build his promised wall. He and millions of Americans want to build a wall, fence, or other type of barrier along the southern border of the United States to keep non-citizens from entering the nation illegally and bringing crime and diseases with them.

            The Republican-controlled House of Representatives and the Republican-controlled Senate failed to send a bill to President Trump to pay for the wall. They had two years to get the job done, but they failed to do so. They wasted their allotted time and opportunity, and Republicans lost the House in November 2018. 

            Trump decided to make a stand in December 2018 and declared that he would not sign any funding bill that did not include $5 billion for a border wall. Democrats are doing what Democrats do best: oppose national security. The result is that part of the government is now in its third-week of a shut down. It currently looks like Trump will stand firm even if the government remains shut down for months or even years.

            Meanwhile, Brian Kolfage, a retired veteran of the US Air Force and a triple amputee, became tired of the way that Congress works and decided to help the President keep his promise to build a border wall. Knowing that Congress would continue to “stall this project by every means possible and play political games,” he started a GoFundMe page. “If the 63 million people who voted for Trump each pledge $80, we can build the wall.” He started the fund 21 days ago, and the fund now has $19,511,995 of the $1.0 billion goal with donations from 324,217 people. If you are tired of reading and hearing about criminals who come into our nation illegally and kill our people, I suggest that you make a donation to the “We the People Will Fund the Wall” fund at this site. 

            Another wall builder is Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) suggested a plan to cover the $25 billion cost for a wall by tightening some rules. Cruz and his allies claim that they could get the funding by denying “food stamps, tax credits, and other federal benefits to people living in the country illegally.” Democrats claim that the wall is “immoral” and that Cruz’s plan would “shift the costs of an unneeded wall onto children, many of them living legally or born in America.”

Even though the plan has “faint hopes” of solving the problem, “it stands as a symbolic marker of how deep the split remains on the intractable problems of immigration and border security.” 

            Obviously thinking outside the box, Cruz came up with a different plan and reintroduced the EL CHAPO Act. This plan would insure that Mexico would pay for the wall. 

EL CHAPO is the nickname (“Shorty”) for the infamous Mexican mafia kingpin who is the former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel and was extradited to the U.S. to face criminal prosecution for numerous drug-related crimes, including conspiracy to commit murder and money laundering. He is presently on trial in New York for all these charges, where the son of the cartel’s co-founder just testified for hours against the drug lord.

EL CHAPO is also an acrostic for Sen. Cruz’s bill that stands for the Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order (EL CHAPO) Act.

The PR explained: “The bill would reserve any amounts forfeited to the U.S. Government as a result of the criminal prosecution of `El Chapo’ (formally named Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Lorea) and other drug lords for border security assets and the completion of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.”

            Chuck Norris, actor and long-time supporter of the wall, calls Cruz’s bill “a brilliant idea.” He totally supports the bill that calls for using the $14 billion forfeited by El Chapo to build the wall. He also likes the idea of Mexico paying for the wall. 

Is Sen. Cruz’s EL CHAPO Act not a brilliant idea to fund the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico? … And guess what? A Mexican pays for it after all – one evil hombre who has repeatedly raped America’s communities and the souls of precious millions through narcotics and other criminalities for the past three decades.

[Norris particularly likes the idea because it would not use any U.S. government money.] Let it be clear: Passing that single bill could be the compromise they all are looking for, and it is the best win-win-win-win solution the Congress and president could ever enact!

            The EL CHAPO bill is a dazzling idea!  However, most Americans know that Democrats hate Trump and want him to fail bad enough that they would find some reason to vote against such a bill. I have also read about other ideas to fund the wall. Representative Andy Biggs (R-Arizona) filed a different bill that would get the wall built at the expense of Mexico. His idea is to fine “Mexico and other countries $2,000 for every illegal immigrant caught crossing into the United States.” Since there are approximately “400,000 illegal immigrants” caught at the border each year, this tax could bring in $800 million per year. That amount would pay for a big chunk of the wall! 

            Another idea that would get the wall built at the expense of Mexico came from Trump himself. That suggestion was to assess “a tax on the money that immigrants living in the U.S. send to their relatives in Mexico. Mexicans sent $28.7 billion in these so-called remittances in 2017, according to Banco de Mexico.”

            There are several bright ideas to fund the wall and secure the sovereignty of the nation, but it seems that every idea needs some support from Congress. Even if the GoFundMe site was able to raise all the necessary money, Congress would have to agree to use citizens’ money to do so. All the other ideas suggested above must be approved by Congress. It seems that there is only one way that Trump can get The Great Wall of America built is to declare a national emergency and have the military build the wall. That proposal would most likely have to go through some court cases before the wall could be built. 

            It seems that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer might have to be convinced of the importance of having a wall. They are not budging at the present time, but they might if the national discussion continues to crescendo about the need for a wall. An illegal immigrant climbing over their personal property walls might do the trick!