If the United States builds a wall on the southern border, sexual assault rates and abuse in certain areas will most likely diminish, drug trafficking and human trafficking from Mexico will be almost completely halted, and the environment will cease to suffer from trash being left behind. We can afford to build the wall, and its presence will be anything but unethical.

Democrats have presented a handful of arguments against building a wall along the southern border.

For example, Democrats claim that our country cannot afford to spend $5.7 billion on the project. But the U.S. federal spending budget is $4.5 trillion, according to CNS News. This means that what President Trump is asking for is only about 1 tenth of 1 percent of our spending budget.

(Democrats have spent much more on less worthy projects in the recent past. According to CNBC, California is building a train that will run from San Francisco to Los Angeles for a cost of approximately $98 billion.)

Now, $5.7 billion is not going to be the final cost of the wall. The wall’s budget has been predicted to be $11 to 25 billion, according to Business Insider. However, what experts can predict for sure is that the construction of the wall will produce thousands of new jobs.

Michael Montgomery, a consultant who helps developers estimate their projects’ economic impact, predicts that a building project of this scale will likely produce between 21,000 and 25,600 jobs for the period of construction alone, according to the economics website Money.

Not only do Democrats insist that a wall (or steel barrier) is too expensive, but that it will be ineffective. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi says it simply will not do its job. But five years ago she had a different opinion, as she supported a bill that required the construction of 700 miles of border fencing, a bill that every single state Democrat voted on. Thirty-six of these Democrats still serve today.

So is a fence more effective than a 30-foot tall steel barrier? It might be interesting to hear Pelosi’s and Senator Chuck Schumer’s opinion on Israel’s barrier that has virtually ended Palestinian terrorism, or maybe if they think that Turkey’s new 500-mile wall across its border with Syria will serve any sort of purpose.

In 2009, only 15 Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorism, as compared with 452 in 2002, the year before construction began, according to the website Azcentral.

To understand why Trump, Republicans, and many American citizens want a wall, one must understand the problem our country has with illegal immigration. America’s southern border has been a welcome mat for drug traffickers, human traffickers, and criminals of all shapes and sizes.

According to El Paso Border Patrol officials, at least 2,500 migrants have illegally crossed the New Mexican border in 2019 so far. The majority of these migrants crossed over a small, remote section. Of those that were apprehended, many were carrying large bales of marijuana. El Paso Border Patrol reports confiscating roughly 265 pounds of marijuana from these migrants.

It’s also worth noting that 94 percent of heroin found in America can be traced back to Mexico, and methamphetamine seizures have quintupled since 2004, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Perhaps most alarmingly, millions of pounds of cocaine have been seized by U.S. Border Patrol. Although more than half of these drugs are smuggled through legal ports of entry, limiting drug traffickers to only one option will help prepare us for greater security at our ports of entry.

Traffickers aren’t just caravanning drugs into the U.S., but human beings as well. In 2018, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security Investigations made 1,588 human trafficking arrests and identified 308 victims. Innocent people crossing our border can become victims of human trafficking and sexual assault. According to the White House’s official website, more than 30 percent of women are sexually assaulted on the journey across our southern border. If we don’t build a wall, our country will continue to be wide open to human trafficking.

Interestingly, there are those who are aware of these facts and are still anti-wall. They argue that criminals from Mexico will throw the drugs over the wall, catapult them even, or use ladders to get over.

A simple counter argument is that Trump’s plan is to send up to 15,000 border patrol agents to patrol the wall, and these agents will likely spot a catapult flinging cocaine through the air.

Migration across the southern border has taken a toll and a beating on the environment, and Arizona has been hit the hardest over the years. The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality stated that approximately 2,000 tons, or 4 million pounds, of trash is left behind along the Arizona-Mexico border alone. Roughy 2,000 different species of plants exist along the U.S.-Mexico border, and they are being abused.

The only real and substantial argument for why the wall won’t work is that it won’t stop private jets filled with narcotics from being flown across the border. However, choosing to not build a wall will do absolutely nothing to stop this either.