Republicans not Willing to Budge on the Wall

Today in the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senators discussed border policy for the US-Mexico border. Democrats and Republicans seem to agree on the fact that there should be some sort of military presence on the border. Both seem to also support the usage of Artificial Intelligence in the border. However, disagreement has arisen regarding the construction of “the wall”. “The wall” refers to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign promise of building a tall structure across the US-Mexico border from his first term as president, with the intention of reducing illegal immigration. Republicans’ support for building and improving the wall has been unwavering.

“As of right now I will not vote for a law that does not contain a wall”, says Tom Cotton (AR-Jr), a Republican Senator. 

When asked about potential concessions that the Republican Party may be willing to make in order to pass the bill, Tom Cotton stated that the Republican Senators “may be willing to make, maybe not a huge wall, but some type of physical structure.”

Democrats on the other hand, point out some inefficiencies that come with the wall.

Amy Klobuchar (MN-Sr), a Senator from the Democratic Party, characterized the wall as “very costly” and pointed out some of its inefficiencies.

According to Klobuchar, “In the year of 2022 there had been 4101 incidents of people passing this wall, which is approximately 11 incidents per day”.

Klobuchar also emphasized the difficulty that comes with “constantly renovating the wall” given that “approximately one third of the cameras currently do not work”.

With the Democratic Party heavily emphasizing the wall’s ineffectiveness and the Republican Party refusing to vote for a policy that does not contain it, it seems presently unlikely that the two parties will manage to find some middle ground and pass some policy.