President Trump has been continuously thwarted in Congress as he seeks money to build a border wall. After all, his critics contend, he said he would make Mexico pay for the thing, so why should they vote any money forward for it, especially the tens of billions of dollars it requires?

The best one, is the taxing of immigrant remittances, a straightforward exit tax taken directly from cash transmitted through the banking system. It works because the money is often earned under the table and is thus, untaxed the way other Americans's income is. It also makes sense because the cash being remitted is critical to the Mexican and Central American governments that depend on the incoming funds (in Mexico's case, more important than oil earnings), and less of it coming across gets the message across that Mexico is paying, even if not all of the remittances are sent by illegal migrants. (Most of it is.)

The other good idea would likely have a direct impact on U.S. finances, in a sort of passive way, that nevertheless could have a big effect, as well as affect only true illegal immigrants milking the system. That is the Center for Immigration Studies's idea of selling the wall to Congress, getting the funding, building the wall, and then benefiting from the fact that with fewer border crossers, there will be fewer welfare bills. Just those savings would pay for the wall, the CIS argues.

Because illegals, with their low education levels, lack of English (much lower than the world at large, by the way), resistance to assimilation, and proneness to look for a Chavista-style handout from the public fisk - are big users of welfare, no matter what the open-border activists say. Without paying a dime in taxes, this comes in their use of Medicaid, food stamps, public education, hospital emergency rooms, student financial aid, police and jail services, and even wear and tear on our infrastructure as they go to their illegal jobs. Letting them in to stay is in fact the importation of poverty, something that drives down student test scores, bankrupts hospitals, fills jails and drains the public coffers.

Paul Sperry, in his column at the New York Post, writes:

Mexico won’t have to pay for the wall, after all. US taxpayers won’t have to pick up the tab, either. The controversial barrier, rather, will cover its own cost just by closing the border to illegal immigrants who tend to go on the federal dole. That’s the finding of recent immigration studies showing the $18 billion wall President Trump plans to build along the southern border will pay for itself by curbing the importation of not only crime and drugs, but poverty. “The wall could pay for itself even if it only modestly reduced illegal crossings and drug smuggling,” Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Post.

It's an important idea as President Trump makes his first visit to California to inspect the progress of the border wall and all its prototypes in San Diego, and sell the wall to the public. The U.S. wouldn't make any profit off ending welfare subsidies for illegals, but finding ways to do it to finance the wall should be good enough for most of the public. What's more, it's doable. In the past, any effort to get illegals off welfare rolls they are not entitled to be on has been stopped by leftwing judges, eager to beef up the Democrats' voter rolls one way or another. With illegals unable to get over at all, and many self-deporting as well, there would be no court cases to thwart the matter.

Then maybe we can get back to celebrating legal immigration and welcoming immigrants as our economy needs. Seems worth trying and President Trump would be wise to push this line of thinking during his San Diego border trip.