Hours after news emerged that Trump's transition team was exploring getting the Republican-led Congress to vote to approve the funding of building a wall on Mexico border, the President-elect renewed his statement last Friday insisting that Mexico would repay the United States back for the planned construction.
The repayment will most likely be base on the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement which groups the United States, Mexico, and Canada, he said to The New York Times.
The incoming administration would need government funding to build the wall, explained Trump's spokesman Sean Spicer who also emphasized what Trump has said last October that Mexico's payment would be a reimbursement.
Spicer confirmed the earlier reports on the funding and said that the idea of the process and figuring out how to pay for it "shouldn't be news".
During Trump's presidential campaign, the promise of building a wall on the U.S-Mexico border and make Mexico pay for it was a major campaign theme and helped energize his supporters. Mexican officials, however, were infuriated by the suggestion and said they would never agree to pay for a wall.
The idea of United States will be paying for the wall to get it started would likely bring resistance to Trump in Congress as some Republican lawmakers worry about the high cost and doubt whether it is the best way to solve the complex illegal migration issue.
Luke Messer, the Republican Representative said on Friday that he had proposed legislation to get Mexico to pay (for the wall) by ending a child tax credit given to illegal immigrant parents, which cost $4.2 billion annually.
Referring to the estimation that a wall would cost $10 billion, Messer said that "If you close that loophole for two years, you could pay for the higher ticket cost," reported Reuters.
Meanwhile, Trump tweeted that the media was not reporting about Mexico would repay money spent to build the wall, in response to media organization on Friday who reported that his transition team had signaled to congressional Republicans that Trump preferred to fund the wall through Congress as soon as April.
Earlier in 2016, Trump's team issued a memo "Pay for the Wall" pressuring Mexico by cutting remittances from undocumented Mexican in the United States.
The memo proposed amending the Patriot Act, passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to include wire transfers as accounts that could be frozen.
"It's an easy decision for Mexico: make a one-time payment of $5-10 billion to ensure that $24 billion (in remittances) continues to flow into their country year after year," the memo said. "We have the leverage, so Mexico will back down," it said.
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