San Pedro

This is a complete travesty.

My wife and I spent a significant portion of our considerable courtship hiking along the San Pedro in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, perhaps the busiest corridor for illegal immigrants in Arizona [though the Border Patrol coverage there seems spotty; they never seem to leave their flatulent air-conditioned SUV's]. The river provides cover and lower temperatures during the summer, runs straight north to I-10, and has an old abandoned railroad track running right along it, all of which factor to make this an ideal illegal immigration corridor. Hiking along the more remote stretches of the tracks is like trekking through a 40-mile-long 10-foot-wide landfill. Every step is littered with discarded water bottles, batteries, shoes, socks, shirts, pants, backpacks, empty food cans, plastic bags, blankets, utensils, and other detritus of desperate human exodus. Walking these tracks is an extremely sobering and humanizing experience. Almost 50 illegal immigrants a day are apprehended in the conservation area but nobody knows how many make it through. Only God knows how many people have died along this route trying to win a better life for their family, but it is easy for me to imagine as I walk there that I am surrounded by informal graves, each marking the end of a brave soul and their family's dreams. Maybe I over-estimate the deaths, but the marks of human tragedy are obvious.

The track route is subject to brutal day-time heat [up to the high 110º's] but the neighboring river-bed is protected by a canopy of massive cottonwoods and thermally regulated by the flowing water. It is an oasis. Hiking in mid-July is rarely feasible in southern Arizona, but here it is delightful. To escape the heat during the days the immigrants pick their way up the river bed, which is exceptionally rough going. We have run across elaborate networks of food caches, scouts, runners, and guides using the bed to smuggle immigrants during the day. Besides a pair of entomologists speculating that our southbound route constituted illegal immigration in an unusual sense, and a single nudist right at the confluence with the access wash, we have never run into a legal American citizen along the river. The Border Patrol flies by the dirt access roads in their SUV's without pausing [except for occasional stops to examine our vehicle and attempt to exact intelligence from us--they shouldn't dare].

That's the immigrant picture in San Pedro. Here's the biological picture:

San Pedro is a complete biological treasure. Due to the proximity to Mexico, north-south orientation, flowing water, monsoons, and high temperatures, the San Pedro contains the breeding grounds for many of the rarest birds in North America [using the convenient birder's definition excluding Mexico]. These birds represent the furthest north extension of many of the neotropical species. Several dozen of these exotic tropical bird species which are found nowhere else in North America breed in the giant cottonwoods along the river. Go to this gray hawk page and look at the range map; the long straight range extension up the western flank of the Sierra Madre Occidental in Mexico is typical of many tropical species found in extreme southern Arizona but nowhere else in North America. Gray hawks were actually our main targets in the area; 75% of all gray hawks north of Mexico breed along the San Pedro.

Western riparian habitats account for more than half of all species found in the region. The San Pedro is often cited as the richest riparian area in the state, and it is the longest undammed river in the southwest. Approaching the San Pedro is a shock of senses: arrogantly laid down in the middle of drab, low-level desert-scrub is a gaudy green ribbon of thriving giant cottonwoods and biological extravagance. It is truly one of the precious treasures of the country.

Much could be said about the damage that has already been done to the San Pedro: devastating, though not on the same scale as the full-fledged rape and murder of the similar Santa Cruz river, parallel and 40 miles to the west. I won't devote any more of this post to those issues, but this piece is well-written, lightweight, digestible, and touches on the conservation issues of the San Pedro watershed.

Now that the background is painted, here's the issue: The Fence. Right through the corridor.

Backed by the ignorant flood of vitriol that is steadily disseminated by the conservative punditry, and empowered by the heavy-handed and arrogantly mongering Current Administration, Michael Chertoff wants to build a fence right through the conservation area. He has used his God-given, er, Current Administration-given powers to “waive in their entirety” every single piece of modern legislation that stands between the Republican extractive economy and complete ecological ruin for the western States. The Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, all are impotent against Michael Chertoff's whim. These acts are often the only weapons on conservationists' belts, now rendered obsolete by a flick of somebody's president's pen.

[So I have just demonstrated what I hate about blogs: diatribing, name-calling, generalizing, ranting, sourceless opining. Here's my attempt at an objective discussion, minimized by the late hour:]

For the fence to be built, it must be established that:

1. The Fence will work
A. Illegal immigrants will no longer be able to cross
B. Drugs will not be able to cross
C. Foreign terrorists will not be able to cross

2. Benefits outweigh costs
A. Environmental damage
B. Capital costs

3. The Fence constitutes a solution to current border issues

Let me set one thing straight before we continue: the god-like powers given to Michael Chertoff to suspend environmental regulations were given as an add-on to his Department of Homeland Security duties in the Real ID Act, which deals almost exclusively with terrorism-related regulations. So nominally the Fence is about terrorism. It is not about illegal immigration.

To address the issues above, I'll say this, briefly:

1. The Fence will not work
A. Illegal immigrants will find other ways to cross the border. They will until economic opportunities exist at home. Desperate people willing to risk death to cross will always find a way to do it.
B. Our own capitalistic model insures that drugs will always be available. Walling off Ogden, UT is probably a more effective method of controlling methamphetamine distribution in the US than the Fence will be for any drug.
C. Foreign terrorists? Are you kidding me? 36 of the 48 al-Qaeda operatives who have been implicated in crimes in the US between 1993 and 2001 entered and stayed in the country legally. They can fly over on a student visa, a business trip, to visit family, for the holidays. A Fence won't stop legal immigrants and visa-holders from blowing up Americans. So who cares even if it can stop illegal entrants from doing it? There are millions of volunteers to do it now that we've set up camp over there and created hundreds of thousands of widows.

2. Benefits do not outweigh costs
A. Environmental damage is the only lasting legacy of a Fence. Habitat fragmentation is the most potent cause of biodiversity loss. The Fence cuts an ugly impenetrable swath right across the San Pedro, among other important areas. I'm convinced, after all my time in the area, that bulldozing even a 10-foot chunk out of the middle of the riparian zone and placing fence there will drastically alter the life cycles of much of the local flora and fauna. Rivers in the southwest are superhighways of animal movement. Walls bisecting highways are not a good idea.
B. Capital costs. Really, at 2 billion a week the War pretty much makes any other expenditure moot. But the 1 billion or so it will take to build the fence could absolutely and irreversible revolutionize the worldwide species conservation effort.

3. The Fence constitutes a band-aid at best for current border issues

The last issue is illegal immigration. Although the Fence is nominally about terrorism, the political expediency comes from rampant fear and misanthropy caused by poor statistics and hysterical public figures. Have you ever known an illegal immigrant? I have. Have you ever met one? Talked to one? Eaten dinner with one? I have. Fantastic, humble, family-oriented people. We could use more. I would have an illegal family as neighbors without pause. The proportion of rotten ones is no higher than that of the general American populace. But their illegal status and the accompanying social barriers put their children at extreme risk for criminal behavior. That is the fault of the way we treat the immigrants, not the fault of the immigrants.

I meet so many people who are ridiculously ignorant on this issue. "They broke the law, I have no sympathy for them." Really? I would jump the fence for my family. Wouldn't you? I'm not a bad person [Ann Coulter is not my judge]. "I say just send them all back where they came from." Really? Will you be the one to work in the fields when all the immigrants are gone? I've worked side-by-side with illegal immigrants harvesting onions, pumpkins, and hay. What they do in a day would reduce you to a quivering pile of whimpering. And it is necessary labor, needed to sustain the economy we all benefit from. "They're not American, America has no obligation to help them." What moral right do you have to a microwave, 3 TV's, frozen pizza, an SUV, multiple pairs of shoes, and all-you-can-eat buffets? You were born an American, yes. Did you die for this country? The entire founding philosophy of this country centers around the inalienability of fundamental human needs. Will you be the one to tell them that your rights are inalienable but theirs are alienated in this country because of where their parents lived when they were born? Your ancestors--if you are like most Americans'--immigrated to this country and found equity. Will you deny equity to those who would come now? What proportion of your hoarded wealth do you feel you will lose from having to share with our new arrivals? "They steal my tax money." Sure. The solution to this is to make them tax-paying citizens.

Something that really, truly should appeal to the very people I wish would listen to this but will never read my words: would Jesus Christ turn the illegal immigrants away? Would he deny them health care? Would he let them die in the wilderness? Would he condemn them for trying to save their families? Would Jesus Christ build a Fence? Would you?

I once met a Peruvian sheep-herder living alone in a small trailer on top of a mountain in Idaho. He spent 9 months a year with virtually no human contact doing a job that no American would take at well under minimum wage in order to feed his wife and children at home. He had to hop the border twice a year. Why should this man have to break the law to get home to his family?

And we're back. This is where it ends:

In the far distant future, a ceremony will be held atop an old set of tracks next to the San Pedro during mid-July at mid-day. The participants will dedicate a memorial to the souls who died trying to find a way to provide for their families. Somebody will say "Mr. President, tear this *&!^@ fence down" and it will be done.

Long live the San Pedro!