Side-effects of the border fence with Mexico

http://www.examiner.com/cable-tv-in-national/the-fence-on-hbo-a-rory-kennedy-film-about-the-us-mexico-border?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
http://www.thefencefilm.com/the_issues.html

A few years ago we had an interesting discussion about illegal immigration, and noted that the US border fence significantly stymied illegal entry in the San Diego area (but may have just diverted it elsewhere). But what have we sacrificed in order to reap the "benefits" of the fence? A recent HBO documentary explored the topic from financial, human, and environmental perspectives.

Congress created and Bush signed the secure fence act in 2006, and so far we have spent $3B in public funds on about 700 miles of fence (in some cases $1.9M/mile). But the US-Mexico border is about 2,200 miles long, so there are significant gaps to say the least, and even inexplicable gaps between sections of fence (see attached jpg called "Tecatehole"), which pretty much invalidates the entire purpose of the fence in that area. Due to the scale of the project over multiple counties and states, the government has contracted numerous companies to build the fence, which is comprised of at least 12 different configurations. In New Mexico, the builders erected the fence on Mexican territory by accident, so they had to tear it down and rebuild it. In Texas, the border is the Rio Grande River, which is quite serpentine. Building a border fence along the river would have been very difficult and expensive, so they built a straight-line fence in the US instead, trapping acres of US territory (even containing TOWNS populated by US citizens) in a no-man's land between the river and the fence (similar to the plight of some Palestinians in the occupied West Bank due to the Israeli wall). In the attached image named "fortbrowngolfcourse", you can see Mexico at the bottom, the RIo Grande snaking through, a golf course on US land on the other side, and the border fence actually runs horizontally north of the course, creating a very bizarre landscape. But what about the "virtual fence" of fancy Boeing technology designed to detect and alert the Border Patrol of illegal crossings? It's an utter failure (the system flags tumbleweeds and wildlife as false positives) and the DoD has suspended all funding for the project, after committing tens of millions already. From what I can tell, the fence's practical purpose is just to reduce the number of miles that the Border Patrol, National Guard, Minutemen, and other concerned parties have to patrol.

The fence was built to ostensibly protect us from terrorism and the social costs of illegal immigration (but what about losing the social benefits?). Of all the successful and attempted terror attacks since 2000, not a single perpetrator entered the US through the Mexican border. Most came by plane to eastern cities, and some were home grown. About 500,000 people illegally crossed the border into the US per year before the fence went up. Guess what the tally is now - about the same, and the global recession was a bigger factor than the fence. They've just been forced into more remote desert regions where the border is not fenced, but this has also resulted in a more perilous journey, with about 1-2 people dying every day attempting to cross (and extra expenses for US authorities trying to rescue imperiled crossers). What about the horrible Mexican drug war and the influx of narcotics into America that puts our kids in danger? Isn't the fence keeping the trouble out of our backyards? Arizona apparently disagrees, and there have been some drug-related deaths. Most of the drugs are smuggled in semi trucks at border crossings, not through areas where the fence exists. The estimated amount of drugs entering the US has not decreased due to the fence.

It's also easy to overlook the environmental costs. The bill that Bush signed included waivers to most major EPA regulations, and the fence even slices though federally protected wildlife refuges (wetlands such as the Rio Grande are some of the most biodiverse and productive ecosystems on Earth). Many terrestrial animals in the southwest are migratory, and may travel hundreds of miles to reach various resources and habitats, but now the fence has blocked their ability to travel as they have been doing for millennia (see confused deer in the "borderfence" jpg). Like the BP spill, it may be hard to quantify the environmental damage of this impediment. The fence has even caused natural disasters. The border area near Nogales flooded during recent heavy rains. Nogales is elevated higher than the US, so runoff usually flows north. But the fence (in this case it was a solid barrier, not a row of piles) acted as a dam, which caused flooding in Nogales' downtown and even 2 drownings (see nogales.jpg).

I can't believe what a forgiving and tolerant people Mexicans are. For how much we and our fence have abused them in recent years (not to mention the racism and crimes earlier in US history), you'd think they would have turned Jihadist on us by now.