Kris W. Kobach drafted the border / immigration legislation
for Arizona, was (to my surprise) defeated in his recent run for Governor of
Kansas, but currently serves as Kansas’s Secretary of State. He reports on the
GoFundMe project to fund the wall on Breitbart (previous CTP blog here):
We are witnessing something truly
extraordinary. In merely 19 days, a GoFundMe campaign to raise private
contributions to build sections of the wall along the Mexico border has raised an
astonishing $19.0 million. It will soon be the most successful GoFundMe
campaign ever—the current record holder is the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund for
victims of sexual assault, which raised $22 million in 2018 over a much longer
period of time. The campaign to build the wall should blow past that
number in a few days.
Let’s put this in perspective. Consider
the Presidential Election Campaign Fund Tax Check-Off, which is promoted by the
IRS through the 1040 tax form and doesn’t require a contributor to give any
money beyond what he is already paying in taxes. In April of 2016—normally
the highest contribution month during a presidential campaign year—it raised
$9.9 million. In a typical month, it raises less than a million dollars.
The GoFundMe wall campaign
was started on December 16, 2018, by Air Force veteran
Brian Kolfage, who lost three limbs while serving in Iraq in 2004. As
Kolfage told me, “People are angry about the inaction on building the
border wall. They’re opening their checkbooks to donate as a way of making
their voices heard.”
The astonishing number of
contributions that this project has received from ordinary Americans
demonstrates just how important the wall is to the American people. Citizens
see the crime, wage depression, and other negative consequences of illegal
immigration, and they want something done about it.
More here. And here’s the report on pending legislation that
will provide the conduit between the GoFundMe contributions and the
construction and maintenance of the wall; click here.
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