Holes in the Fence

Holes in the Fence

The most visible sign of the movement to stop illegal immigration in the U.S. has taken the form of legislation to build a 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. President Bush signed The Secure Fence Act on October 26, 2006, and now Homeland Security is trying to implement the law, with Michael Chertoff asserting that if necessary, his agency will seize land from unwilling property owners in order to continue construction.

More than legislation to block access to education or health care, or to require that landlords check the immigration status of their renters or to impose sanctions against employers who employ undocumented immigrants, the proposed “fence” has symbolized the determination of some Americans to “keep them from coming,” that is to stem the flow of undocumented immigrants across the U.S. -Mexico border.

While many might assume that this hostility to illegal immigration stems from resentment over the off-shoring of U.S. jobs and the belief that these immigrants are taking away employment from U.S. citizens, David Kane, Chair of the American Conservative Union, offers a different explanation: “I happen to think that the American people's real problem [with immigration] isn't about jobs...It's not about the crime and all those things, although that exists. I think what the concern is, is that we've had waves of immigrants that have not been able to be absorbed; they haven't been assimilated, and as a result people are concerned about what they see as the balkanization of American culture and the American nation. And I think neither side really talks about it in those terms,” ( “Conversations with Conservatives,” NPR's Morning Edition, February 25, 2008).

In other words, in Kane's view, these immigrants persist in being “not like us” - their language, their culture, and their tendency to move back and forth across the border make them seem alien and resistant to mainstream American culture. However, what Kane's words really underscore is the fact that all the reasons usually alleged as a necessity for this fence don't really apply. For example:

1. Undocumented immigrants from Mexico aren't stealing American jobs. Kane explicitly says, “I don't know very many people who think that some illegal immigrant from Mexico is going to come in and take their job. That's not what happening.”

2. There is no documented threat of terrorists crossing the U.S, Mexico border. Kane doesn't even deign to mention this common assertion to support the need for this fence, but rumors that international terrorist groups are rampant in rural areas south of the border have flourished since 9-11, according to one Texas television station. It is true that Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw claimed that arrests of alleged terrorists have occurred on the border, but the only confirmed case he was able to point out was the July 2004 arrest of a woman in McAllen, Texas, who reportedly had ties to insurgents in Pakistan. Houston Republican Congressman, John Culberson, also stated he saw an Al-Qaeda training camp across the border from rural south Texas, but authorities have never substantiated his claim.

3. Mexicans crossing the U.S. Border are not contributing in any significant way to crime in the U.S. Indeed, James Lynch, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, notes that studies have proved that "in the United States immigrants engage in common law crime at rates lower than the native population" (“The Myth of Immigrant Criminality and the Paradox of Assimilation,” Immigration Policy Center, Special Report, Spring 2007).

This doesn't mean that there has not been an increase in violence along some parts of the border, but as a State Department alert issued on March 6^th of this year, such incidents are largely directed against Mexican nationals rather than U.S. Citizens and are “the product of a war between criminal organizations struggling for control of the lucrative narcotics trade along the border. “

So if The Secure Fence Act isn't really about preventing terrorism or stopping crimes perpetrated by undocumented immigrants, why is the U.S. government building it? And how is it impacting American citizens and property-holders living on the borders?

The answer to the first question appears to be that the fence is a sop to anti-immigrant sentiment that naively assumes that we an solve the problem of undocumented cross-border immigration simply by imposing a physical barrier between “us” and “them.” The history of the Berlin Wall should give us some idea of how quixotic and ultimately how pernicious an enterprise such as this border fence may appear to future generations on both sides of the barrier.

But in the meantime, Americans should consider a more pressing issue: how does the wall affect U.S. citizens and property holders who are being asked, nay, whom the government is demanding, to yield one of their most fundamental right, namely the right to private property, in order to achieve this goal?

It would be one thing, if this 700-mile fence really were a contiguous barrier separating the U.S. and Mexico. But as recent reporting has revealed, the actual implementation of this fence by the Department of Homeland Security reveals plans to build not so much a “fence” as a segmented series of barriers, in which gaping holes, ranging from a few miles to more than a hundred miles, exist solely in order to benefit well-connected property-owners who don't want a fence spoiling their resorts, their golf courses, or their private reserves.

As first reported by The Texas Observer, many small land-holders like Eloisa Tamez, question why the proposed border wall is slated to go through her backyard and effectively destroy her home, and yet stop at the edge of the River Bend Resort and golf course, a popular winter retreat, two miles down the road. The wall starts up again on the other side of the resort. Other property owners, selectively impacted by the wall's course, include the University of Texas at Brownsville.

One of the most egregious examples, is the exemption of property owned by Dallas billionaire, Ray L. Hunt and his relatives, one of the wealthiest oil and gas dynasties in the world. Hunt, a close friend of President George W. Bush, recently donated $35 million to Southern Methodist University to help build Bush’s presidential library. Hunt has recently transformed his more than 6,000 acres into a gated community of expensive homes with its own golf course and utilities. None of this property will be fenced off from Mexico.

So what does the Department of Homeland Security have to say to small property owners and public institutions like the University of Texas? Although Homeland Security chief, Michael Chertoff, has been quite pugnacious in interviews, Bush Administration officials have become increasingly tip-lipped following lawsuits by angry property owners who want to know the reasons their properties have been selected for demolition, while golf course owners and others with high-level connections to the Bush Administration are exempt. Following the Bush Administration's tendency to use national security as a cover for maintaining secrecy, the Department claims that to reveal the methodology for choosing what properties are being taken for the building of the fence and those that are being exempted would compromise "national security."

In the meantime, the “security” fence, in its current configuration will create a barrier between the United States and Mexico that is dotted with holes, many miles in width.

So what good is a wall with holes miles wide? It is a question that every American who cares about both illegal immigration and about the basic property rights of American citizens should be posing to their representatives and to the current administration that still maintains that this pock-marked fence will be built in the service of protecting the American public from terrorism and that anyone who questions the reasons for it could potentially damage "national security."