Conservative pundit Ann Coulter tweets a daily \u201cBorder Wall Construction Update.\u201d It reads the same every time: \u201cMiles completed yesterday — Zero. Miles completed since inauguration — Zero.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Congress dithers over yet another amnesty for illegal aliens, President Donald Trump\u2019s promised border wall is stuck in the mud.<\/p>\n
A year after Trump moved into the White House, eight wall prototypes<\/a> are on display south of San Diego. But Elaine Duke, deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, says people shouldn\u2019t get too excited.<\/p>\n \u201cIt won\u2019t necessarily be one of the eight. What comes out may be totally different,\u201d Duke told a Border Security Expo<\/a> last month.<\/p>\n Duke proceeded to list several legal and logistical impediments to construction. \u201cWe\u2019re concerned about private property rights,\u201d she said, noting that federal land acquisition is \u201ccomplicated.\u201d<\/p>\n Twenty-eight miles of replacement wall near San Diego is DHS\u2019 top priority, followed by an \u201caction plan\u201d for Texas\u2019 largely wall-less Rio Grande Valley. The plan pivots on land ownership issues.<\/p>\n At this rate, 2020 will be here and Trump will be running for re-election without any new barriers built.<\/p>\n If a dysfunctional Congress and a plodding Homeland Security bureaucracy persist in icing the signature pledge of his 2016 campaign, the president must turn up the heat. That takes money \u2013 other people\u2019s money.<\/p>\n Open-borders groups dismiss Trump\u2019s call to make Mexico pay for the wall. \u201cThere is no way Mexico is going to pay,\u201d flatly declares Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution<\/a>.<\/p>\n But taxing or imposing fees on U.S. funds sent privately to Mexico and other countries makes dollars, and sense.<\/p>\n Foreign remittances represent a significant, but often overlooked, cost of mass immigration. According to the World Bank<\/a>, $133.5 billion in remittances flowed out of the U.S. in 2015. In 2016, remittances to Mexico (mostly from the U.S.) hit a record $27 billion, exceeding that country\u2019s revenues from oil exports. An estimated 83 percent<\/a> of Mexicans who enter the U.S. illegally send money home.<\/p>\n Tapping remittances is neither a new nor exotic idea. Oklahoma assesses a 1 percent fee on all personal wire transfers of cash to accounts outside the state. Why not charge for funds leaving America?<\/p>\n In less than 10 years, a 2 percent remittance surcharge would raise the $25 billion Trump wants for a border security trust fund<\/a>, including a 2,000-mile wall.<\/p>\n Taxing foreign remittances should be a bipartisan no-brainer. Retaining pennies on the dollars leaving the country generates cash for border security while letting foreign governments know that Uncle Sam won\u2019t be played for a sucker.<\/p>\n As for those daily jabs from Coulter, Trump recently tweeted back: \u201cThe wall will be paid for, directly or indirectly, or through longer term reimbursement, by Mexico.\u201d