Protesting the Border Wall

Students from the Latino Policy Association (LPA), a graduate student organization in the Evans School of Public Affairs, are arguing that the building of a border wall between the United States and Mexico would only increase tensions between the two countries.

“Students should know that our government has wasted tax dollars on poor immigration policies,” said Danny Kaufman, a member of the LPA. “Building a physical wall between the U.S. and Mexico is inhumane.”

President Bush signed the Secure Fence Act in 2006 that allowed Homeland Security to build a wall along the Southwest borders. Nearly 337 miles of pedestrian and vehicle fencing are completed. Homeland Security waived laws last week to expedite the wall construction despite strong opposition from border citizens, according to an article in the Rio Grande Guardian.

The Congressional Research Service estimates that the fence will cost $70 million per mile for new construction and maintenance within the next 25 years, according to an article in USA Today. The cost doesn’t include the confiscation of land and school properties, and the extinction of endangered species that had crossed regularly before parts of the fence were built.

Nearly 3,600 migrants died while attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border from 1995 to 2005, which, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), is “10 times deadlier to migrants from Mexico [in 10 years] than the Berlin Wall was to East Germans throughout its 28-year existence.”

Border crossings are humanitarian crises, said former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention said it has become a major public health issue. Illegal border-crossing deaths increased 20-fold from 1990 to 2005, the majority of which occurred in the U.S. Border Patrol sector of Tucson, according to the GAO.

There are 26 U.S.-federally recognized American Indian tribes in the Southwest borders that range from nine to 17,000 members. Amnesty International documented Border Patrol officials who harassed indigenous peoples for lack of proof of citizenship when crossing the border for native ceremonies.

Many border coalition groups have protested the wall; environmentalists, educators and community leaders have pleaded for a better way to address immigration, and the Texas Border Coalition is pondering suing the federal government.

“The REAL ID Act gives one administration appointee the power to unilaterally waive all of our nation’s laws,” the Texas Border Coalition Web site stated. Schools, families, landowners, businesses and municipal governments have been affected.

“Many of the children come from Mexico and 99 percent are Hispanic,” said Roel Gonzalez, Rio Grande CISD Superintendent. “They have brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers living a mile away on the other side of where that fence will be.”

Gonzalez doesn’t dismiss immigration as a simple issue.

“I understand the need for border security but it is really hard for me to explain to the children why their families are going to be fenced off,” he said.

Rights shouldn’t be tossed aside, said Meghan Kelly, an LPA member and concurrent Evans and Law School student. Kelly has worked for nearly five years at law firms fighting for immigrants’ rights. She envisions LPA as a venue to bring Latino policy issues to the forefront of student discussions.

Immigrants don’t cause economic recessions nor do they drain social services; they don’t start wars and they don’t steal jobs, Kelly said.

The majority of immigrants are neither criminals nor terrorists, and citizenship is required to qualify for most social services, Kelly said.

LPA will host a film night and discussion panel this month.

“I encourage students to attend this event,” Kaufman said. “It will open your eyes to border issues.”

[Reach contributing writer Marissa Beach at news@thedaily.washington.]