How Enviros Obstruct the Border Patrol

[Geee]

American Spectator:

How Enviros Obstruct the Border Patrol
By Tom Bethell from the September 2010 issue

My wife and I sometimes attend a "wild game dinner" on Capitol Hill. It's a lot of fun. People interested in environmental issues, some of them employed by congressional committees, almost all on the Republican side, discuss the latest "green" tactics. The basic position of those who attend is that free markets better protect the environment than government ownership.

At the latest dinner I was told something I had never heard before about the Arizona immigration law that has caused so much liberal fury. Why has the illegal immigrant problem been concentrated on Arizona? The mainstream media respond this way:

"As border controls are tightened elsewhere, including through the construction of a border fence in parts of Arizona, California, Texas and New Mexico," Peter Slevin reported in the Washington Post, "Mexican migrants and smugglers have gravitated" to parts of Arizona near Tucson. The police chief from Nogales was quoted: "When you plug a hole in the wall, the water looks for another spot to flow through. Arizona is that spot."

But this story, and another in the New York Times ("On Border Violence, Truth Pales Compared to Ideas"), plus almost everyone else, missed the real story: migrants and drug smugglers (marijuana, mainly) are attracted to parts of Arizona for a specific reason. On these federal lands, environmental regulations prevent the Border Patrol from doing its job. That's what the mainstream media won't report.