Big balls, bigger wall

Chertoff lies, wildlife dies

Posted by Glenn Hurowitz (Guest Contributor) at 2:06 PM on 24 Oct 2007

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced yesterday that he's going to just waive the Endangered Species Act, the Toxic Waste Disposal Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (among many others) in order to plough ahead with building a wall along the Arizona-Mexico border in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.

He repeated his rationale that the wall could be good for the environment because migrants leave behind trash:

But there are also environmental reasons to stop illegal crossings in the SPRNCA. Illegal entrants leave trash and high concentrations of human waste, which impact wildlife, vegetation and water quality in the habitat. Wildfires caused by campfires have significantly damaged the soil, vegetation, and cultural sites, not to mention threatened human safety.

As anyone who's spent any time along the border (or, really, anywhere on the planet) can attest, this statement is a complete lie. A little pile of trash in the wilderness might be unsightly, but it has nowhere near the effect of a giant, honking, double layered concrete wall. (Which, um, is a little more unsightly, if that's the standard we're going by.)

Since when is a wall a solution to trash anyway? I think usually, Mr. Chertoff, the way people clean up trash is by picking it up. What jaguars and bobcats and Sonoran pronghorn antelope and ocelots need is not a trash-free wilderness, but a wilderness that doesn't cut them off from the breeding populations on the other side of the border. Increased Bush administration border activity and the climate crisis have already reduced populations of the endangered Sonoran Pronghorn Antelope from 500 to below 25.

Oh, and by the way, no one actually thinks the wall will keep any illegal immigrants out. The Border Patrol itself admits that it only slows people down by 3 to 4 minutes. That's probably 60 seconds if the person has a ladder. And they think there are 40 or more tunnels under the wall. And more than 40 percent of illegal immigrants don't get here by sneaking across the border: they just overstay (PDF) their visas.

There's a tiny, little, eensy-weensy silver lining to this announcement: the Sierra Club responded aggressively to it with a national news release, and deserves a lot of credit for doing so. As I chronicled in my recent investigation in Grist, the Sierra Club and many other environmental groups have been shy about fighting the border wall for fear of getting tangled up in the polarized immigration issue. They've apparently decided that the time for shyness is past and the time for fighting is here -- and that this issue could make the border region America's new environmental heartland. Also, NRDC has jumped in, albeit with a blog post.

More than 150 miles of the wall have already been built; because Congress gave Chertoff the authority to waive any law that gets in the way, the only chance to stop all 700 miles of border wall is through an act of Congress. Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva has introduced a bill that would give some moderately increased protections to the border region. Unfortunately, because of the lack of work on the bill, it has only 21 cosponsors and only 4 who don't live in the border region.

It's unclear exactly how much Grijalva's bill would do even if passed -- Senate Democrats are using $3 billion in funding for border security (including 700 miles of fencing) as bait for Republican votes on the Homeland Security bill (the funding was approved 95-1, with even the Senate's usual environmental champions lining up unanimously behind it, showing that they weren't even considering the huge environmental consequences). It will take House Speaker Nancy Pelosi standing up to defend the wildlife and people to keep that funding out of the final House-Senate conference.

During a recent trip to the Rio Grande Valley, Pelosi did tell Texans that the wall was "a terrible idea," but the Democratic leadership has a terrible record of caving whenever the right wing gets riled up about something as they are about immigration -- even though many if not most immigration opponents (including Minutemen) either don't care or oppose the wall.

We need Congress to act quickly, before more of the wall is built. You can email your members of Congress here and ask them to cut off funding for the wall.

For story: Big balls, bigger wall
7 Comments | Post a Comment

invaders vs wildlife

The author apparently loves the invasion of foreigners from the south, and is ready to let millions of acres of land be developed and many other species go extinct. And the foreigners from the south with 6th grade educations don't give a you know what about the environment or wildlife.

by cbloom at 10:20 PM on 25 Oct 2007

Au contraire

Dear cbloom,

How do you know that those you term "invaders" don't care about the environment or wildlife? Your comments merely demonstrate your bigotry and lack of knowledge.

I used to teach undocumented workers, and found them to be lovely, open, kind-hearted people who cared very much about both the environment and wildlife (unlike most anti-immigrant nativists I have encountered).

As to education levels, the great level of American education has prevented people from believing in Weapons of Mass Destruction, while denying American Sponsored Global Warming. Or from believing outrageous right wing lies about undocumented workers.

Kudos to the Sierra Club for standing up. Shame on so-called environmentalists who stay silent (hint, if you can't stop the wall, you will probably get nowhere stopping American Sponsored Global Warming).

patrick in Beijing

by bookerly at 12:27 AM on 26 Oct 2007

enough with the nativist xenophobes!

Glenn,
thanks for this very interesting post, as well as for the related piece in Grist, which drew so tangled a bunch of comments that I did not want to add anything there. Your point that trash in the Sonoran desert of Arizona is nowhere near as horrible and dangerous an ecological offense as the wall is excellent.

Patrick,
we cannot hear enough of testimonies like yours. The efforts of far too many in this country to treat Latinos indocumentados as criminals, on one level, and as scum, on another, are despicable.

Generally, the recent Latino immigrants whom I have got to know have not really wanted to come to this country, and do not want to stay; they are hard-working; they are honest; they are not criminals; they do their best to learn English. As for how we all measure up virtue-wise, probably I would not meet THEIR standards. And if the Republican anti-immigrationist jerks were to think about the matter seriously, they would probably gladly send a moral slouch such as I to Puebla or Oaxaca in exchange for someone more upstanding. : (

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 1:04 AM on 26 Oct 2007

Cbloom

From the above article:

"Oh, and by the way, no one actually thinks the wall will keep any illegal immigrants out. The Border Patrol itself admits that it only slows people down by 3 to 4 minutes. That's probably 60 seconds if the person has a ladder. And they think there are 40 or more tunnels under the wall. And more than 40 percent of illegal immigrants don't get here by sneaking across the border: they just overstay (PDF) their visas."

There are other much more effective ways to regulate immigration. The wall is just another one of those politically astute things to do, like corn ethanol, which takes advantage of an ignorant and gullible American public (not that you are one of them).

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 6:05 AM on 26 Oct 2007

Trash wall

The worst trash asociated with the wall?

Chertoff and his fellow bribe swilling trash in the bushwacker administration. It's all about huge kickbacks.

It has nothing to do with stopping illegal immigration. Has anyone bothered to check what percentage of workers on the wall are illegal?

Nope, because we all know the wall is being built by illegal contractors, just like every other big government project in the southland.

But let's talk about that new abu ghraib that Blackwater is building along the southern border. A special corporate prison for illegal immigrants. I bet the torture will be justified because illegal immigrants are really enemy combatants? Am I right Eric the white (billionaire krazy, kristian, kriminal, korporat, krusader Eric prince, head of blackwater and it's more permanent parent company, Greystone)?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

by amazingdrx at 6:32 AM on 26 Oct 2007

it's the environment that matters

I see the environmental movement has truly been infiltrated by people with other agendas other than the environment. Yes there are many other ways to control immigration but none of you would ever agree to any of those methods either. The population of the US will soon be 400 million and that apparently doesn't matter. And please don't use stupid words like "bigot" and "racist" give me a break. I live in Arizona and see the effects of the uneducated masses living here every day. Sorry, kids, this is our country, and we cannot afford to have the 5 billion people that live on less than $1 a day move here, nor the millions of Mexicans from their far richer country.

by cbloom at 9:46 PM on 26 Oct 2007

We can agree on that, but....

Dear cbloom,
If you honestly believe that "it's the environment that matters" how can you support destroying it in order to save it?

Let the jaguars return!

by Storm Dragon at 2:14 PM on 01 Nov 2007
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