My mother's first cousin had a house in Prescott, AZ, and a condo in Scottsdale. Pete died around 2006 or 2007. The first thing his widow did was sell the condo in Scottsdale. We asked her why.
"Too dangerous. I won't go there."
Yeah, the illegal alien population even a decade ago had reached epidemic proportions around Phoenix. Let's face it, Scottsdale isn't the low-rent district. It's far worse around Tucson and the counties that abut the border. The comments about coming home to find a bunch of illegals camped out in your kitchen are not fairy tales. Folks who live anywhere near the border in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas are living virtually under siege.
The Scottsdale condo is too dangerous? I call BS on that. I live in Mesa and work in Scottsdale. There isn't a square foot in Scottsdale that's too dangerous for anything. Everyone in Beverly Hills has a 2nd residence in Scottsdale or Cave Creek (just north of Scottsdale) or Paradise Valley (west of Scottsdale). The "bad" part of Scottsdale is right next to ASU, and it's "bad" because it has a bunch of strip clubs and lingerie/bathing suit stores.
Huh. So after the President spoke and we had the Democratic rebuttal, my wife and I turned to each other and asked what was the point of this? Is it supposed to motivate the people to call Congress or the President and encourage them to negotiate and leave the respective entrenched positions? Up here in the PNW, the majority of illegal aliens are people who arrive by plane on a student or tourist visa and overstay it. Perhaps I would be more enthusiastic about a wall if I lived in the Southwest.
I lived in Walla Walla for High School and went to college in Tacoma (UPS). Summers, I worked in the ag industry, alternating between driving a pea harvester combine and doing various jobs inside a cannery in Milton Freewater, OR. There's a huge migrant labor force that follows seasonal ag work all the way from California to Canada and back down through Idaho and Utah. I'd see the same people every summer for pea and strawberry harvests, but they moved on to potatoes in Idaho or started back over with lettuce in Yuma, never staying in town for more than maybe 2-3 months. They worked hard (peak demand in the cannery would hit two 12 hour shifts at 7 days a week, giving an 84 hour work week) and got good money out of the lifestyle. It paid anywhere from $7 to $15 an hour with overtime after 40 hours. That was great money in 1995 to 2000.
I was the oddball though, being a white middle-upper class kid looking for work. Even in Walla Walla, which is a huge wheat and pea and onion farm town, teen labor numbers are pretty low. That food has to get harvested somehow, and the work is seasonal/rotational. The migrant flow fits the labor demand. You don't find many US citizens willing to follow the harvest labor cycle around the western US.
The wall is going to be either a boondoggle and a joke, or it's going to be massively detrimental to US agriculture. Those are the only two options I can see.