Mr. Trump, tear down that wall

“Mr. Trump, tear down that Wall”

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            Presidential candidate Donald Trump wants to build a wall to help keep out immigrants entering the United States. There are other things he could build that might do a better job of minimizing immigration entering the United States from Mexico. The reality is that illegal immigration is fueled by a large gap in opportunity depending on which side of the American-Mexican border one lives on.

            We need to imagine different ways of addressing the illegal immigration issue. Imagine that you are living in Mexico. You don’t speak English fluently, but you know there are Spanish speaking people living in many areas of the United States who can help you learn the language. You live in a nation with mediocre infrastructure, high unemployment, and large numbers of people working for less than $5 a day. You learn that across the border there are cities where the minimum wage is $15 an hour. You are faced with a dilemma. You can try to enter the USA legally and probably will never be able to do so. You can enter illegally and maybe you will get caught and returned to Mexico, but you know many have made the illegal entry and have been able to stay and their children born in the USA have an opportunity for a stable life. Which is more important to your system of values? Is it more important that you obey American laws that seem to protect a huge wage gap between the USA and Mexico or do you try to provide a better opportunity for your children whatever might happen to you?

            Presently the goal of Presidential candidate Donald Trump is to try to build a wall to keep people from entering the United States illegally. That can be done but it will involve a huge cost of building the structure and a continual cost of providing enough people to guard the wall and keep it maintained. It will do nothing to address the reasons why people are willing to cross a border where they do not fluently speak the main language, where they will often be treated with disrespect, and yet they feel that they are giving their children an opportunity to live stable lives with their spouse and children. There will still be people who find a way to work around any wall to keep out immigrants who are entering illegally.

            But the other possibility we need to consider is if it might not be actually cheaper to build pieces of infrastructure in strategic areas within Mexico that might help to create within Mexico the hope that life will get better even if one remains in Mexico.

            To this end I wonder if instead of spending the money for building a wall between our nations, we built something like solar wind tunnels in the desert regions of both the United States and Mexico. There are actually two kinds of solar wind tower models to choose from. In past years solar wind tunnels were built using an updraft method. At the bottom of the tower, large tube structures have air forced into them which is then heated by the Sun heating the tubes. As the air heats from a number of tubes, then the hot air rises into a tower and is pushed by the heated air looking to expand and as the air flows upwards turbines placed throughout the tower are turned producing electricity. There is virtually no pollution in the process and the desert that covers much of Mexico as well as areas of our American West would be an ideal place to build these structures.

            A second kind of solar wind tunnel is now being developed with the hopes of building the first of its kind in the city of San Luis, a city along the border of Arizona and Mexico. You can read about this innovative solar wind tunnel that uses a downdraft instead of an updraft here. Instead of using tubes at the bottom to collect, heat, and force air upwards into the tower; the method used in this second solar wind tower pumps water across the top of the tower cooling the air around the top of the tower. The result is the cooled air naturally descends into the tower and then multiple turbines at the bottom of the tower produces electricity. The advantage of this method is that electricity can be produced at night as well as in the day using the cooling of air to drive the generators. The disadvantage is that it will require water but much of the water will be able to be recollected in the process and will for the most part not be polluted. The tower planned for building at San Luis will cost approximately $1.5 billion. The tower planned at San Luis is expected to produce an amount of electricity equivalent to that produced by the Hoover Dam. The cost of the electricity produced to consumer is projected to be about the same as the cost of natural gas produced electricity in present power plants. This is minimal pollution, tremendous amounts of energy produced at quite competitive costs.

            I wonder how much Mr. Trump’s wall will cost to build, man, and maintain. Will it produce electricity? Will it do anything to give the average Mexican laborer a reason to hope? We could build towers as part of a beginning to build a modern electricity producing grid capable of powering a 21^st century economy. The American electrical grid is in need of modernization. The Mexican electrical grid has been less than sufficient for its twentieth Century needs. Mr. Trump wants to get Mexico to pay for the wall he dreams of building, you know it will be a really great wall but how do we really think Mexico will pay for the wall. But these solar wind powers that will help create the power to make Mexican lives better, help energize increased productivity and help raise standards of living might be something that Mexico would be interested in contributing to the towers’ building.

            It is at least something worth considering. Maybe Mr. Trump or another person elected to the presidency can tear down the wall before it is even built.