Vivek Ramaswamy’s Proposal For A U.S.-Canadian Border Wall Dismissed By Experts

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy proposed at the Republican presidential debate that the U.S. build a wall not only on the southern border of the United States but also on the northern border shared with Canada.

Several Canadian experts have dismissed this idea, terming it ridiculous and illogical.

Jason Kenney, who has held positions as Alberta premier, MP, minister for citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism and later as minister of defense, stated that it is clearly impossible to construct such a wall. It would take several decades and require an expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, he said.

He added that no American national security expert has proposed building a wall along the northern border as most believe that it would be a disastrous misuse of resources without any improvement to border security.

Ramaswamy, 38, asserted that last year, a sufficient amount of fentanyl entered the country through the border to cause the deaths of three million Americans.

During the presidential debate, Ramaswamy stated that two walls should be constructed to prevent the influx of drugs into the U.S.

He recently visited Quebec’s Roxham Road crossing, where he remarked that traffickers and undocumented immigrants could easily cross the border due to the vast forested area. However, data indicates that fentanyl trafficking scale along the U.S.-Canada border, which is the world’s longest, is negligible compared to the U.S.-Mexico border.

According to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), approximately one kilogram – or just under two and a half pounds – of fentanyl was confiscated at the Canadian border during the 2023 financial year. This amount is significantly less than one percent of the 26,718 pounds (12,119 kilograms) of fentanyl confiscated at the southern U.S. border during the same period.

In the previous financial year, only 14 pounds (6.3 kilograms) of fentanyl was confiscated at the Canadian border compared to 14,104 pounds (6,397 kilograms) along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Moreover, CBP figures show that there were around 189,400 migrant “encounters” at the U.S.-Canada border during the 2023 financial year, which was significantly less than the 2.47 million reported at the border with Mexico. In the previous year, just 2.7% of arrested migrants at the same border were apprehended between entry ports.