On the Environment and Immigration Reform

By Dr. Herny Flores, NewsTaco

            Last week I attended a presentation by Krista Schlyer, a photojournalist who published a book entitled Continental Divide.  Her presentation was on the effects that the border wall, the wall the United States is constructing between itself and Mexico, has had on the wildlife habitats that overlay both countries.  Although her comments were designed to address the environmental and habitat issues, she did extend them to immigration reform.  I suppose I had been curious about what she said for quite a while but she really placed the entire relationship between environmental degradation and immigration in a clear context.

Ms. Schlyer traced the history of the wall from its origins under NAFTA through present times pointing out how the wall not only disrupted natural migration and feeding patterns but also forced immigrants to cross the border in very hazardous places.  NAFTA displaced millions of peasants from their farms and forced them to come to the United States.  The Clinton Administration decided to implement a strategy of “prevention versus deportation” and began building the wall.  It now covers almost the entire border with the exception of the area between Texas and Mexico.

Mexico has insisted that the wall not be built along its northern border with Texas to protect the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande watershed.  Building the wall along the Texas border, argues Mexico, will create possibilities of floods and endanger habitats, drinking and irrigation water supplies.  Still, the United States is determined to build the wall regardless of the environmental externalities just to inhibit undocumented immigration.

The new immigration reform bill that the now infamous “Gang of Eight” unveiled recently in the United States Senate, all 844 pages of it, adds more money and has more focus on border security than anything else.  This overemphasis on border security has been at the behest of Republicans, aided and abetted by the two Latino Republicans Cruz and Rubio.  The Republicans are also using the Boston Bombing to add fuel to the raging debate around immigration reform.  Well, I´ve got news for you senators: both bombers would have been in compliance with the bill anyway and they still would have bombed those helpless folks in Boston!

Ms. Schlyer’s presentation made it clear how complex the entire immigration issue is.  Our public officials are only acting in a “knee-jerk” fashion and not taking a truly complete look at what a comprehensive immigration reform program would look like.  All the senators are doing is listening to their party’s ideologues, the defense and gun industries and ignoring the social wellbeing of the border communities on both sides.

The way in which the United States is pursuing border security may be designed to keep immigrants from crossing freely but the effects have been and will be disastrous not only for communities, but for the environment as well.  Even if the wall is completed it will not prevent immigrants who earnestly wish to come into the United States from at least trying.  Crossing the wall is not that difficult for a young person (if I tried they would have to place me in traction for at least a month). All you have to do to see what I mean is go to YouTube and search for the video of two young women who managed to climb the wall in less than 18 seconds.  Can you imagine how easily determined people could duplicate or better the feat of these young women?

Although the current debate appears to indicate that the $1.5 billion dollars being allocated for border security will not be used for wall building, my sources inside the senate say otherwise.  Regardless, the border security element of the current immigration reform bill is really nothing more than a bargaining chip placed in the bill to allow Republicans and some Democrats leverage to weaken the path-to-citizenship elements of the bill.  Pro-immigration reformers are being faced with extortion in order to get any kind of bill, even a bad one, out of congress.

The path-to-citizenship provisions are already so extreme that it’s almost better to just kill what has been proposed by the “Gang” (I wonder if they have hand signs and placas like street gangs), rather than go forward with a bill featuring environmental degradation, endangering wildlife habitats, as well as endangering the health and welfare of communities on both sides of the border.

I fully understand the quandary I’m creating but I’d rather have no immigration reform than bad immigration policy.  I’d rather have the status quo of uncertainty and risk than new policy featuring codified peligros for all.  What we need is a policy developed by a group of individuals whose operating assumptions have nothing but the absolute welfare of the planet at the forefront rather than electoral or monetary gain.

You can follow Dr. Henry Flores on Twitter : @hflores