Guest Commentary
We should direct our frustrations about the border toward positive change, not scapegoating
by Dan Millis
This fire season has wrought destruction, sorrow and scapegoating of proportions that boggle the mind and wrench the heart. Controversy over blame for the wildfires on the border has been nearly as hot as the flames and embers themselves.
Could border-crossers be responsible for igniting some of these devastating blazes? Sure. What about Border Patrol agents, their vehicles or equipment? Absolutely. Our border wildlands are overrun with both.
Following in John McCain's footsteps, the Tucson Weekly's "Arizona Burning" article (June 30) put the blame squarely on migrant shoulders, giving voice to the supposition that campfires and signal beacons along clandestine border trails are the most likely culprit. Weekly readers are familiar with this argument by now. In countless stories, one author has blamed trash, theft, dead livestock, environmental damage, murder and, yes, wildfires along the border on economic migrants, though he prefers to label them with the degrading term "illegals."
Some warn against dismissing the work of Leo W. Banks; after all, he has won several journalism awards. It was only last month that the Center for Immigration Studies, dubbed a nativist, restrictionist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, awarded Banks the 2011 Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration. Prior awardees include Lou Dobbs, who made headlines when he moved to Fox after a long career of bashing immigrants for CNN.
Banks' brand of sensationalist hearsay journalism aside, blaming migrants for Arizona's border woes misses the point. The scofflaws that plague Arizona with border mayhem walk the boulevards of the Beltway, not the trails of Peck Canyon.
Since the mid-1990s, the federal government has pursued and implemented border policies that have proven nothing short of catastrophic. It began in 1994 when the North American Free Trade Agreement increased the cross-border flow of capital. When labor followed the money, lawmakers took a more-protectionist tack. Instead of a go-with-the-flow approach, monumental efforts went into walling migrant laborers out. Borders, especially in urban areas, were militarized with walls, agents, cameras, sensors, helicopters and more. Border-crossers who had once hopped chain link in Nogales now cut barbed wire beyond Arivaca, walking day and night through the wild hinterlands. Arizonans took notice by what was left behind: clothing, water jugs, footpaths and the migrants themselves—some injured, some dead. Perhaps also the potential calamity of a campfire not quite extinguished.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, a terrorized U.S. Congress made matters worse, allowing the Department of Homeland Security to waive any federal, state, tribal or local law in order to build barriers, walls and roads along the U.S.-Mexico line. Already burdened by unnatural foot and vehicle traffic from migrants, smugglers and the Border Patrol, our borderlands environment was further decimated. Some 650 miles of barriers and walls funneled border-crossers to ever-more-remote and mountainous terrain, while 36 federal protection laws have gone unheeded.
Not far from where the El Camino Fire burned, a national wildlife refuge has been walled, habitat lost, wildlife stranded. Just east of the still-smoldering Monument Fire, a quarter-mile of rusty, man-height vehicle barriers fester in the bed of one of the last undammed rivers in the Southwest. On both river banks of this national conservation area, walls pick up where the barriers leave off, screaming a symbolic "F-you" at the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the Clean Water Act, and more.
These walls are illegal, not the people who climb them. Fatal border policies that funnel people out into the border's wildest areas, where every year they die by the hundreds, and run the risk of causing or becoming a victim of a raging wildfire, are flat wrong.
Though fire is a natural element in a healthy forest ecosystem, the ferocity of recent blazes no doubt surpassed acceptable levels. Recovery may be a long time coming to wildlife habitat, cultural resources and personal property. As we muddle through the soul-crushing task of tallying the damages and preparing for monsoon mudslides, we should carefully direct our frustrations and attention away from scapegoats and toward positive change.
Benefit concerts and fundraisers for Arizona fire victims are already seeing success. Please support these efforts. And when your federal government decrees a fire closure of a national forest with one hand, while funneling migrants and law enforcement into that forest with the other, take them to task.
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I'm stunned, Dan, but in a good way. Like after hearing a good sermon. Thanks, Tucson Weekly, for letting Dan speak.
"These walls are illegal, not the people who climb them." Only a liberal, blinded by the open-border rhetoric, would write such nonsensicle dribble. I wonder if the author lives in a house and if so, is there a fence surrounding the house? So if I crawled over his fence at 3 a.m. would he call the police or invite me in to share all the comforts of his home? Maybe he'd feed me, accommodate my health-care issues, provide me with spending capital until I found a job, provide for my education, and even give me his wife or boyfriend as a symbolic guesture of friendship. THESE ARE THE INSANE NOTIONS OF A LIBERAL, much like the penner of the editorial.
Actually, THESE ARE THE INSANE NOTIONS THAT DEFINE CHRISTIANITY. Just sayin...
Thank you, Dan. Well written, excellent points.
The solution is to make the border with Mexico more pourous rather than less pourous.
If we do that capital will flow South and labor will flow North until equilibrium is achieved.
Thus both countries benefit. Think about how much money undocumented immigrants have been pumping into Arizona's economy in the past decades. Even if they are paid under the table they still buy food, clothing, gasoline, and pay rent. Our economy could use that revenue right now more than ever. Unfortunately Congress won't pass a guest worker program that takes pressure off of the border. One that provides a way to document the workers and make sure they are paid fair wages so they won't be taking jobs away from American citizens. Those who are hung up on the fact that the workers are here illegally need to pick up a history book and discover how American took the Southwest portion of this Continent from Mexico by force during the Pearce administrations declaration of "Manifest Destiny" in the 1840's. Manifest Destiny meant that President Pearce decided
unilaterally that American should own all of the continent "from sea to shining sea". For twenty years Mexico complained to the U.S. about American citizens who were illegally immigrating into what was then Mexico's land (Texas, New Mexico. Arizona, California)- land which Congress had just agreed did belong to Mexico. The U.S. Government did not respond until President Pearce tried to buy the land from Mexico. When Mexico refused to sell, President Pearce found a pretense to invade Mexico. Our troops drove all the way down to Mexico City and forced the Mexican Government to sign over the land at gun point. Read about this yourself and decide who is on this land legally and who is not. We like to think we are the good guys and sometimes we are - but not always and certainly not in this case. Jay Quick
Jay Quick
Dan, what strikes me about your piece is how it evidences the way that the US creates victims with one policy and, through PR deception, simultaneously spins them into criminals.
This was a thoughtful, perceptive analysis of a complex issue. I happen to almost totally agree with the point of view of the author, but I do understand that there are other perceptions which lead people to different positions. What I don't understand is how anyone who is sentient can characterize it as "nonsensicle (sic) dribble."
Thanks Dan for a brilliant article, and also to Tucson Weekly for publishing it. It would be helpful to read more reasoned pieces about migrants, and less fear-mongering. Sandra Anderson
When the Southern Poverty Law Center labels the Center for Immigration Studies a hate group, public discourse has reached a new low point. Does Dan Millis also believe the Center for Immigration Studies is really a hate group, or is he just subcontracting such trash talk so as not to own any responsibility for it?
This is like calling calling everyone who ever asked you to follow a rule a Nazi. It disrespects the real victims of the Nazis. So anyone who believes the US has both a right and a responsibility to regulate who enters the country and what they bring with them is simply hateful?
Hate groups do exist. The term should not be rendered meaningless by applying it to responsible, informative organizations like Center for Immigration Studies.
I have read your article a couple of times, and still can't figure out why, in your opinion, simple 'migrants' are so prevalent on the border. Wouldn't the vast majority of 'migrants' there be 'illegals'?
If they are on the US side of the border, they are illegal. This simple fact seems extremely difficult for the liberal press to comprehend. They continue to blame the US for deaths of these 'migrants', and seem to want to provide them with air-conditioned vehicles from the border inland to whichever city they choose to migrate to.
Just my comprehension of your article.
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