Posted on 04/30/2008 5:15:30 AM PDT by fweingart
OUR OPINION: NO OFFICIAL SHOULD HAVE SUCH POWER TO IGNORE U.S. LAW
In the poem, Mending Wall, Robert Frost questions whether ''Good fences make good neighbors.'' In the Department of Homeland Security's push to complete a 670-mile fence along the Mexican border, it's bullying and intrusiveness that are making us a bad neighbor. By disregarding more than 30 U.S. laws, not to mention common sense, DHS will damage the environment and violate property rights in the region. Already the fence has raised hackles among U.S. residents and Mexicans along the border. And it has drawn deserved constitutional challenges.
And for what? There are signs that, no matter how high and thick the wall, determined immigrants will find the means to breach it.
470 miles to go
This month, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff invoked the power that Congress gave him in 2005 to waive any federal law that deters completing the fence. He wants to finish the 470 miles left to build before the year ends. To do so, he suspended laws that protect endangered species, migrating birds and specific habitats.
This puts at risk fence areas such as the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas, home to 17 federally endangered or threatened species. Among them is the ocelot, a small wild cat. Only 80 to 100 ocelots remain in South Texas. Their survival depends on crossing into Mexico to breed. Also threatened in an Arizona refuge are 70 Sonoran pronghorn antelopes, the swiftest mammal in North America.
The fence has provoked the ire of many border communities, and DHS has had to take property owners to court just to survey land. No one government entity should have such sweeping authority to ignore laws that protect individual or collective rights.
DHS Secretary Chertoff defends the waiver of the laws in the name of national security. Yet national security does not exist in a vacuum, nor does it justify the potential environmental damage and human ill-will this fence poses. What is the point of national security if the nation's ideals and laws are destroyed in the process?
More work visas
Even the national-security argument is specious. Keeping out farmworkers, dishwashers and wait staff does little to make our country safer. If anything, it serves to drive up the price of food. As long as U.S. employers have jobs that Americans won't fill, needy immigrants will find a way to enter this country. Congress could better address the labor demand by increasing the number of legal work visas.
Whether Congress had the authority to cede so much power to the DHS may be considered by the Supreme Court. Better yet, Congress should repeal the DHS secretary's unwarranted waiver power, thus allowing the rule of law to govern the fence project.
Congress passed new laws giving DHS the power build the fence. They are in no way ignoring US law.
With all the layoffs, one would think that the stupid journalists, writing tripe as above, would be let go and the good journalists would rise to the top.
Unfortunately there are few, if any, good journalists.
There are, however, some excellent columnists who share our points of view.
I think DHS should just build the fence north of any ones property that does not want it on their property...
The Border Patrol could wait just outside the property and when the owners start complaining, charge them for service.
Mexico has a fence on its southern border and shoots crossers. Where are the complains about them?
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