Build a wall and make the Americans pay for it!

Well kiddies, with Trump set to possibly win the U.S. election it's about time we seriously started to consider building a wall between us ......, AND GETTING THE U.S. TO PAY FOR IT!  ;>)

(Here's an article from Quora Digest)

Guest Post by Erik Hagborg,

The U.S. - Mexico border is 3,145 kilometers long.  

As of 2012, 550 km has a fence. 

Congress has spent about 2.7 Billion on this giant eyesore.  (about 5 M per Km).

Most of that terrain looks like this:

Although there are some rougher parts like this:

So now lets imagine trying to build a wall through this terrain: 

It's gonna cost more. 

And what are you going to do at all the lakes and rivers?

Build a floating wall?

Not to mention that most of that border is almost inaccessible.  You know who cut those trees down?  Guys with chainsaws  There are no roads. They flew in, cut down the trees and then left.  What would it cost to bring in a reinforced fence and all the necessary heavy equipment?  It's almost impossible to estimate.

And looking at past wall building projects it's pretty obvious that keeping a straight line is going to be hard.

(Great Wall of China)

 

Even on relatively flat rolling terrain:

(Hadrian's Wall in Scotland. The Romans built it to keep the Scots out!)

So to build that wall you're going to have to give up some territory to accommodate the terrain.  Is the U.S. willing to give up some land in order to have a fence?  I doubt it.

And the U.S. Canada border is almost 9,000 km long.

So let's simplify. 

• Let's ignore the need to follow the curve of the terrain. 
• Let's ignore the inaccessibility and level of effort just to get equipment and materials there to start building.
• We'll also ignore the Alaska border, (-2400km) 
• And forget building some sort of floating wall over the lakes and rivers, 
• And the politics of building a wall between two close allies.

Even with all those limitations, based on costs of the Mexican Border Fence, you're still looking at somewhere north of $250 Billion dollars.   Make it a more robust wall, as specified in the original question and you're talking in excess of a Trillion dollars.

And at the end of the day anyone with a canoe can probably circumvent it at hundreds of places between British Columbia and New Brunswick.

So yeah.  Any political candidate that even proposes this is so far out to lunch that they should be immediately evaluated by a trained psychotherapist.

 https://www.quora.com/Would-it-be-economically-feasible-to-build-a-wall-between-the-United-States-of-America-and-Canada