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Comment by cdubzzz | Hacker News Reader

> Opposite to her, Donald Trump has earned his money himself. And at least he is sincere in what he says. His position is straight and clear.

This must be satire...

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"Build a wall across the Mexican border and force the Mexican's to pay for it" is an extremely clear proposal, and it's been repeated often enough that I'm willing to believe that Mr. Trump sincerely believes it's what we should do.

That doesn't make it, y'know, actually feasible, or a remotely good idea even if it were.

It's hard to say -- one of Trump's surrogates called the Mexico border wall a "virtual wall" and suggested that we may "build[sic] a wall over some aspects of [the border]".

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/top-trump-surrogate-sa...

http://politicsnow.buffalonews.com/2016/05/17/trumps-promise...

That makes me think Trump doesn't have any particular policy preferences, or even enough understanding of the situation to make policy choices. Rather, he understands and can exploit anti-latino immigration sentiment.

Is that an actual proposal of his? I would call "force the Mexicans to pay for it" anything but clear, hah.

Admittedly I have basically zero knowledge of either presidential bid, the "Donald Trump has earned his money himself" part was what really made me think this must be a joke.

> Is that an actual proposal of his?

Sadly, yes. https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/pay-for-the-wall

The leverage to be used is to threaten to block remittances from Mexicans in the US back to their families. This makes up a large part of Mexico's economy. It could certainly work.

Guccifer 2.0 actually criticizes Trump on immigration in the very next line, though. So it's a pox on both the Clinton and the Trump houses.

Blocking remittances is probably impossible. Even if you could shut down all the direct channels for money to flow from US nationals to Mexican nationals, which you can't, it's trivial to either send easily resellable goods like gift cards or to transmit the money to some third party in a neutral country who agrees to forward it on for a small fee.

Even if it were possible, blocking remittances is probably illegal under our free trade agreements with Mexico. Any attempt short of pulling out of NAFTA is all but guaranteed to be tied up in courts for years before it could possibly go into effect.

And even if it were legal, a huge disruption to trade is all but guaranteed to cost the economy vastly more than the cost of just doing it ourselves (even assuming we actually wanted to).

All of which is before you even consider the internal politics of getting the US congress to pass a bill in the first place, or of convincing the Mexican government to roll over and accept a huge insult without requiring anything in return.

There is essentially no realistic model under which "it could certainly work". It's a feel-good idea that falls apart with the smallest amount of critical analysis. It's a childish conception of international relations, and any attempt to actually implement it is all but guaranteed to both fail miserably and make absolutely everybody worse off in the process.

You're not looking at this as part of a comprehensive policy. If you bypass normal remittances, you out of the frying pan and into the fire of processes that make your illegal status visible to the federal government through KYC and all the "soft" rules that are in place that track people that use gift cards, etc. If someone had the political will, it would be trivially easy to identify practically all illegal immigrants who operate in the country and use any mechanism to store or transfer money. You don't even have to be more "evil." The processes and information are all already in place. Just a man willing to use them would have to be placed into a position of power.

Even if you're legal, as soon as you bypassed the remittances law you probably committing half a dozen other crimes, that are easily tracked.

Regardless if this is a "good idea" or not, it is very, very feasible.

There's zero need to actually do it, just threatening it should be enough.

I was wondering about that. Trump inherited his money and built it up with plenty bankruptcies in the process. He's also terrible to employees. With that, I could see two positions for a hacker to take: opposing him as a fake in business and elite snob; respecting him as a fellow troll that hacks the business and legal systems for his own benefit. Not the claim he made, though.

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