Nature or Newcomers?

An article written by the Associated Press, “Border Fences Could Imperil Wildlife, Environmentalists Say,” stresses the possible environmental ramifications of building a wall on the Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants. The fears are well founded; the proposed barrier would probably cut through various animal refuges and cut animals off from a source of fresh water. What the paper doesn’t address is that the illegal immigrants passing over the Mexican border daily are a large national security risk; building the wall will help to prevent the blatant disregard of the United State’s laws.

The Associated Press describes the wild beauty of the lands, the river, and animals that inhabit the surroundings. The article refers to environmentalists who “have spent decades acquiring and preserving 90,000 riverfront acres of Texas scrub and forest and protecting their wildlife in a distinctly unique area containing 11 different eco systems.” The Associated Press quoted the outreach manager at a local wildlife refuge, Nancy Brown, who said, “Any destruction of brush is very damaging.” The environmentalists state that the wall will prevent animals from reaching the Rio Grande, depriving the animals of the only nearby fresh water source and eliminating their ability to swim across the river to mate. The area where the wall is being planned is currently under the guard of a “virtual” fence but signs of illegal immigrant activity are found frequently in the refuges. Carter Smith of the Nature Conservancy Organization says the fence idea is “wholly incongruous with the 30-plus year investment by the federal government, the citizens, and the landowners of the Rio Grande Valley who have worked hard to protect their special land and water.”

First off, I believe that we have a responsibility to conserve and protect our environment, but national security should not be compromised in the name of being environmentally friendly. While the environmentalists have done a great job for decades, building and protecting the area, Americans are charged with an even bigger task, protecting the nation that our forefathers founded over 200 years ago. According to the Immigration and Naturalization Services, in 2003 there were over 8 million illegal immigrants in the United States, over 78,000 of these were from countries on terror watch lists. The INS estimates that around a half million people illegally immigrate to the United States every year. No matter how you look at it, illegal immigrants are breaking the laws of our country. If they were breaking a different law and instead there were 8 million murders or thieves loose in the US, the citizens would be extremely outraged when the law did nothing to stop the law breaking. It seems as if Americans are forgetting that while the illegal immigrants are people looking for a better life, they are illegal and in the United States we punish lawbreakers. Mexicans themselves don’t necessarily create a national security threat, but the illegal immigrants create a supply and demand effect for false papers. Furthermore, the fact they can survive, under the radar of our government, undermines the authority and power of the US in the minds of potential terrorists. Americans have a false sense of security because our legal channels of getting in and out of the country are so stringent, but the truth is there are thousands of miles of borderland that are guarded with merely a chain link fence. Clearly, we need a much more dramatic and impressive way to keep out the hundreds of thousands of people who pay no attention to the legal system in the United States.

Another concern addressed in the article by the Associated Press is the economic repercussions that this proposed wall could cause. According to the article residents “worry that the barrier…will damage the tourism industry along the Rio Grande”. The area is home to over 500 species of birds, wild cats and reptiles, which attract many tourists into the area. The Associated Press claims the tourism industry brings in $150 million a year to the otherwise destitute area. The fence could theoretically create a sort of no-man’s land, destroying all the wildlife that draws visitors.

The largest problem with this argument is that illegal immigrants put an intense strain on the economy of the United States. While many anti-immigration reformists will tell you that illegal immigrants are a boon to the economy because they work for extremely low wages, illegal immigrants take money out of the pockets of local taxpayers; legal citizens are paying for the schooling and hospitalization of illegal immigrants. In 1996, Dr. Donald Huddle, a Rice University economics professor, published an analysis detailing the expense that illegal immigrants incur on taxpayers yearly. Dr. Huddle estimated that 37 billion dollars are spent on education, food stamps, housing, Medicaid, and other programs that should be reserved for legal citizens. Illegal immigrants do contribute to sales taxes, which would offset some of the costs, but even with sales taxes figured in; over $24 billion was estimated as coming out of taxpayers’ pockets in the study. Even more startling, in the past decade, inflation has caused the figures to rise; conservative estimates place the amount of money paid out of our pockets at around $55 billion, a figure that includes the amount of taxes the illegal immigrants pay. Clearly, the potential loss of $150 million as a result of building the wall is a small amount compared to the $55 billion that is spent on illegal immigrants annually.

Building a wall on the Mexican boarder could possibly be detrimental to the surrounding wildlife; but the benefits far outweigh the risks. The Associated Press brings up viable issues, but they forget that people are more important then animals. We must put the security of our nation above the possibility of destroying wildlife.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/us/22texas.html?_r=1&oref=slogin