Published on San Diego News Network, August 10, 2009
Earlier this spring President Obama urged an enthusiastic crowd of university students in Istanbul, Turkey to “build new bridges instead of new walls” around the world.
I’m guessing Mr. Obama avoided this rhetorical flourish during his visit this week to Mexico. After all, as he sat down in Guadalajara with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, contractors for the Department of Homeland Security were putting the finishing touches on 670 miles of double barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Right here in San Diego border walls now cut through the Tijuana Estuary, an internationally-recognized coastal preserve, and prohibit public access to Friendship Park, a historic venue where for decades residents of the two nations have gathered peaceably at the international boundary. And in eastern San Diego County, DHS contractors are blasting their way through the Otay Mountain Wilderness to build more border walls where the mountains themselves are an overwhelming deterrent to illegal border crossing.
In Arizona federal officials pressured wildlife managers to approve new border walls in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, and border wall construction in Nogales caused millions of dollars of flood damage in the neighboring town of Nogales, Mexico.
In Texas, border walls threaten to cut off entire communities from the Rio Grande River and to decimate dozens of private landholdings, many of which have been occupied by the same families for generations.
This latest frenzy of border-wall construction was made possible because in 2008 Michael Chertoff, then head of the Department of Homeland Security, waived some 35 federal laws and dozens of state and local laws along hundreds of miles of the border. The waivers were enabled by Congress, which acted in 2005 to grant Mr. Chertoff the authority to waive any and all laws he deemed necessary to expedite border wall construction. While many considered this an abdication of Congress’ constitutionally-mandated responsibility to oversee the Executive branch, it has withstood challenges in the courts.
Much like people in other parts of the country, many of us who live on the border had come to expect that laws enacted by our duly elected representatives would protect our region’s environmental and cultural heritage. This expectation – that the most basic democratic principle, the consent of the governed, applied to residents of the borderlands – now seems naïve in the extreme.
In the last years of the Bush Administration DHS officials refused to consult with experts in border ecology and topography, dismissed out of hand the protestations of local elected officials, minimized the impacts of border wall construction on tribal lands and neighboring Mexican communities, and quite simply ignored the borderlands’ leading environmental, human rights, religious and cultural organizations.
To its credit, the Obama Administration has begun a new campaign of community outreach, with “Border Czar” Alan Bersin convening a series of conversations with leaders from across the border region. When I get my turn with Mr. Bersin I will share with him my recent conversation with Laura Silvan, a colleague from a small community foundation in Tecate, Mexico.
Speaking to me through the border fence at Friendship Park before public access to the site was eliminated, Silvan said, “I find it curious to be standing here in solidarity with you as the wall is being built.”
When I asked her why, she explained: “For as long as I can remember, we in Mexico have envied you in the United States because of your government’s commitment to principles like democratic transparency and environmental stewardship. Now, when finally we are making some progress on these matters in Mexico, your government seems to be headed in the opposite direction.”
Perhaps Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon showered a similar kind of gentle sympathy on President Obama when the topic came up at their recent summit.
After all, “doubling down” on Bush-era strategies of border enforcement may be a necessary political predicate to comprehensive immigration reform legislation, sure to offer permanent residency to millions of Mexicans now living without documents in the United States. President Calderon knows that many U.S. politicians will need to be able to justify their votes for immigration reform by saying to their constituents, “See, we are cracking down on the border so no more ‘illegals’ will get in.”
But perhaps President Calderon was more assertive. After all, he knows as well as President Obama does that the border wall offers no real solution to the complex problems facing the two nations. Even on the limited question of reducing illegal immigration, the wall has proven singularly ineffective. (As a senior advisor to a U.S. Senator leading the charge for immigration reform told me in a recent conversation, “it’s not about what works, it’s about what sells.”)
“Since it doesn’t work,” Calderon might have asked his American counterpart, “does your administration really want to embrace the wall as a symbol of U.S. foreign policy? Or are you, Mr. President, opposed to the building of walls everywhere around the globe except on your own nation’s southern border?”
Earlier this spring President Obama urged an enthusiastic crowd of university students in Istanbul, Turkey to “build new bridges instead of new walls” around the world.
I’m guessing Mr. Obama avoided this rhetorical flourish during his visit this week to Mexico. After all, as he sat down in Guadalajara with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, contractors for the Department of Homeland Security were putting the finishing touches on 670 miles of double barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Right here in San Diego border walls now cut through the Tijuana Estuary, an internationally-recognized coastal preserve, and prohibit public access to Friendship Park, a historic venue where for decades residents of the two nations have gathered peaceably at the international boundary. And in eastern San Diego County, DHS contractors are blasting their way through the Otay Mountain Wilderness to build more border walls where the mountains themselves are an overwhelming deterrent to illegal border crossing.
In Arizona federal officials pressured wildlife managers to approve new border walls in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, and border wall construction in Nogales caused millions of dollars of flood damage in the neighboring town of Nogales, Mexico.
In Texas, border walls threaten to cut off entire communities from the Rio Grande River and to decimate dozens of private landholdings, many of which have been occupied by the same families for generations.
This latest frenzy of border-wall construction was made possible because in 2008 Michael Chertoff, then head of the Department of Homeland Security, waived some 35 federal laws and dozens of state and local laws along hundreds of miles of the border. The waivers were enabled by Congress, which acted in 2005 to grant Mr. Chertoff the authority to waive any and all laws he deemed necessary to expedite border wall construction. While many considered this an abdication of Congress’ constitutionally-mandated responsibility to oversee the Executive branch, it has withstood challenges in the courts.
Much like people in other parts of the country, many of us who live on the border had come to expect that laws enacted by our duly elected representatives would protect our region’s environmental and cultural heritage. This expectation – that the most basic democratic principle, the consent of the governed, applied to residents of the borderlands – now seems naïve in the extreme.
In the last years of the Bush Administration DHS officials refused to consult with experts in border ecology and topography, dismissed out of hand the protestations of local elected officials, minimized the impacts of border wall construction on tribal lands and neighboring Mexican communities, and quite simply ignored the borderlands’ leading environmental, human rights, religious and cultural organizations.
To its credit, the Obama Administration has begun a new campaign of community outreach, with “Border Czar” Alan Bersin convening a series of conversations with leaders from across the border region. When I get my turn with Mr. Bersin I will share with him my recent conversation with Laura Silvan, a colleague from a small community foundation in Tecate, Mexico.
Speaking to me through the border fence at Friendship Park before public access to the site was eliminated, Silvan said, “I find it curious to be standing here in solidarity with you as the wall is being built.”
When I asked her why, she explained: “For as long as I can remember, we in Mexico have envied you in the United States because of your government’s commitment to principles like democratic transparency and environmental stewardship. Now, when finally we are making some progress on these matters in Mexico, your government seems to be headed in the opposite direction.”
Perhaps Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon showered a similar kind of gentle sympathy on President Obama when the topic came up at their recent summit.
After all, “doubling down” on Bush-era strategies of border enforcement may be a necessary political predicate to comprehensive immigration reform legislation, sure to offer permanent residency to millions of Mexicans now living without documents in the United States. President Calderon knows that many U.S. politicians will need to be able to justify their votes for immigration reform by saying to their constituents, “See, we are cracking down on the border so no more ‘illegals’ will get in.”
But perhaps President Calderon was more assertive. After all, he knows as well as President Obama does that the border wall offers no real solution to the complex problems facing the two nations. Even on the limited question of reducing illegal immigration, the wall has proven singularly ineffective. (As a senior advisor to a U.S. Senator leading the charge for immigration reform told me in a recent conversation, “it’s not about what works, it’s about what sells.”)
“Since it doesn’t work,” Calderon might have asked his American counterpart, “does your administration really want to embrace the wall as a symbol of U.S. foreign policy? Or are you, Mr. President, opposed to the building of walls everywhere around the globe except on your own nation’s southern border?”
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