Washington: A plan announced Friday by the Biden administration will damage funding for a specific project to build a wall on former President Donald Trump’s border, as well as damage to the environment. The status given to it for working fast by bypassing the regulations will also be lost.
After US President Joe Biden took office, the construction of the wall came to a halt amid a review of the project by his administration. Republican members of Parliament protested this due to fears of migrants coming from America’s southwest border. The project hasn’t been completely scrapped, but it may still face opposition in Congress, with some Republican lawmakers close to the former president wanting to see the project move forward.
Biden wants to return more than $2 billion in funding that the Trump administration allocated from Pentagon spending for the wall. Also, the remaining amount will be used to deal with “life, safety, and environmental problems” arising due to construction. The administration has also asked lawmakers not to provide additional funding because Biden’s team believes it is an unnecessary effort. “Building the Great Wall across the southern border and spending billions of US taxpayer dollars is not a serious policy solution, nor is it a reasonable use of federal funds,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.
For decades, US governments have been building walls and other barriers along the 3,200-kilometre US-Mexico border to cut off some of the easier routes to unchecked entry into the country. Trump had made this issue the center of his political identity. The Trump administration had built about 725 km of the wall and kept the project out of the scope of environmental review and arbitration.
