YOUR OPINION: Navy Proposing ‘Austere’ Tent Cities to House Migrants at Cost of Hundreds of Millions of Dollars

'if tents are good enough for American service members, they should be good enough for criminals who invaded our country'

YOUR OPINION: By Ilene Davis, CFP

As Congress continues to battle over immigration legislation, the United States Navy is drawing up plans for detention centers and tent cities designed to hold tens of thousands of migrants.

There is a report that the U.S. Navy plans to build “temporary and austere” tent cities to house 25,000 migrants across three abandoned airfields in Alabama, 47,000 people at a facility near San Francisco, and another 47,000 at a training center in southern California. The document estimates the Navy would spend $233 million to run a facility for 25,000 over six-months.

I’m sure there will be complaints from some that tent housing is substandard and might create a “cruel and unusual” existence for people seeking to migrate, mostly illegally, to the U.S.

However, if tents are good enough for American service members, it seems to me they should be good enough for criminals who invaded our country.

But, wait a minute, doesn’t it make much more sense to invest in President Trump’s Southern Border Security Wall and actually enforce U.S. immigration laws than to concoct schemes to temporarily accommodate the invaders and provide even more incentive for them to attempt illegal entry across our borders?

An estimated $69 billion a year was sent by illegal immigrants to their “home countries” in 2016.  Perhaps there should be a substantial federal surcharge for every money transfer or even a 50 percent tax on every dollar someone living and working illegally in the country sends “back home.”

That would be over $30 billion a year that could pay for the cost of seeking out and detaining those caught here illegally, with any excess going to pay for training and education of American citizens.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ilene Davis, a resident of Brevard County since 1971, is a Certified Financial Planner with a bachelors degree in Mathematics from the University of Michigan, a bachelors degree in Accounting from Rollins College, and a Masters in Business Administration from Webster University.  Davis became a stockbroker in 1982, earned her designation as a Certified Financial Planner in 1984, and with a desire to serve clients more on her own terms, opened her own financial consultant office in Cocoa Village in 1986. She has combined her professional and personal experience with keen financial insight and instinct into her first book, Wealthy By Choice: Choosing Your Way To A Wealthier Future, which was recently published by Tablet Publications of Cocoa Beach and is now available on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, TabletPublications.com and ChoosingWealth.com. She is committed to helping each client create their own “Financial Freedom Fund,” and believes strongly in free market capitalism and a “hand up rather than a hand-out” as the best path to prosperity.

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