Border Issues
July 1, 2007
I recently served on a committee to study the establishment of a permanent checkpoint on I-19. I experienced this responsibility as urgent and critical as did all the others on the committee. Although we did not agree on the virtues of the checkpoint, our common ground was that we all wanted to help secure the border and keep our neighborhoods safe.
The Nogales contingency approved of a permanent stop to the north, but few residents between Nogales and Tucson are feeling lucky to have a station built in their midst, with good reasons. They have learned that other checkpoints have faced many problems and none of the other checkpoints are interrupting vital growing neighborhoods such as ours. We already know the stop spreads traffickers into the hillsides, pushes undocumented people into dangerous land, cuts us off from our biking, hiking and bucolic pleasures, trashes the landscape and ties up our roads. And it promises to cost a fortune for taxpayers.
Personally, I fear that we are being asked to approve a new military bureaucratic arm of our government, the ever-expanding Border Patrol. The EEBP. As far as I am concerned it has thus far not served us as we would like. The Border Patrol is known for not responding to calls, not removing the dead from the desert, going inside when it rains and failing to clean up after people they apprehend. Some enjoy intimidating local citizens by chasing crossers into backyards; flying helicopters like cowboys and cross-examining people at the checkpoint.
I want to see an improvement of operations before I sign off to more funding. The border police have increased about 400% in the past eight years. They have new electronic devices, money from the federal government, the cooperation of our Arizona government and the ability to close the border at the border — but they say this is not possible. They would rather close it 30 miles north of the border from the vantage point of modern barracks, a comfort zone for their dogs and new electronic toys.
The estimated cost for the building alone is between 12 and 20 million dollars. That’s a big investment a doghouse and some toilets.
Our ancestors fought for this land and cultivated it. We should not turn this beautiful countryside into a war zone, a no man’s land, as the people of the Laredo refer to the land south of their checkpoint. To build a multi-million dollar structure north of the border is not only defeatist thinking, it is a waste of taxpayers’ money. It is putting the horse before the cart. It is saying we can’t before we have even tried. We haven’t failed at holding the line at the border because we haven’t put out all we can to secure it.
I do believe that if we grant the Mexican government our respect, we can turn the state of Sonora into partners in our efforts to secure a border that respects the law. We are not an empire and cannot succeed in our all too common we versus them attitudes. When will we learn that military solutions and walls are only temporary?
Let’s get our expensive, very expensive, equipment (Boeing contract in the billions) to the border before we relinquish roughly 200,000 square miles of the United States. Historically, no checkpoint has moved south once it was built so we don’t want to start there. Let’s start at the most southern point before we give up. According to the Smart Borders agreement we can place our detectors on both sides of the border. Let’s do it. Let’s help the Mexican government find and close the tunnels and guard the known highways and bi-ways of migrant trails. Let’s stop the flow of weapons from our country to theirs. So doing, we can shut down the trafficking, and reduce the horror stories of young families trying to cross a cruel terrain.
And above all, let’s stop scapegoating the Mexican people who in large part have been invited here. These are the people who have done the jobs we didn’t want to do, for wages we would refuse. Let’s remember this area was Mexico first, and those roots go deeper than ours. I hear people forget they are talking about fellow human beings when they talk of the undocumented travelers. Some brag about carrying a gun so they can pick one off to teach the others a lesson. Bad, very bad, thinking. Just because our country is threatened by outside forces, let us not sink into the mindset of pre-war Germany. It was their sense of vulnerability that opened their minds to suggestions that all their economic woes were due to a people they considered foreign and socially marginal. We are better than that. Let’s not forget it.
Copyright 2007 Carol St. John
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