More on Immigration and Wasting Money

I was thinking about my post about immigration on Thursday and wanted to follow up.

After a little research I estimate that the lower 48 states have about 11,000 miles of border, including both coastline and the lines between the US and Canada/Mexico.

To keep illegals out, figure you would need at least 10 border agents per mile (each agent covering about 528 feet). So that means you need 110,000 border agents. And that's at any given moment. Remember these are federal employees who work 40 hours per week if you're lucky, and they get vacation and all that. You need three shifts at eight hours each, and then you need weekend and vacation coverage.

So when all is said and done, we need about 500,000 border agents. If the average cost of maintaining these employees is only $100K/year (salary, benefits, and the cost of training, supervising and equipping them), I think we're talking about $50 billion a year. Then you add in the cost of processing all those that are caught and deporting them. So maybe $100 billion is a reasonable estimate.

Also keep in mind that we've left out the Alaskan coastline and its border with Canada, as well as the Hawaiian coastline.

Hmm. Maybe $100 billion isn't that bad. It's a lot less than the Iraq war. :-)