Can a Wall Pay for Itself?: An Update
By Steven A. Camarota on January 8, 2019
When asking whether a border wall can pay for itself, the key questions are the cost of each illegal immigrant, and the number of illegal crossers, vs. the cost of a wall. Making reasonable estimates of these factors allows us to calculate what share of future illegal border-crossers the wall would have to stop or deter from trying to enter in order for the wall to be cost-effective. This updated analysis indicates that to pay for the president's $5 billion wall request, a wall would have to prevent about 60,000 crossings — or 3 to 4 percent of expected illegal crossers in the next decade. If we make much more conservative assumptions about both the cost of illegal immigrants and future flows, it still shows that a wall would have to stop or deter only a modest percentage of illegal crossings to pay for itself.
Findings
https://cis.org/Camarota/Can-Wall-Pay-Itself-Update
