Chertoff’s criticism of Mexicans is foolish

HERMOSILLO, Mexico — The people in this northern Mexico city are still shaking their heads in disbelief at Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff’s assertion that undocumented immigrants are “degrading” the environment on the U.S. border.

Look who’s talking, they say.

In an interview with The Associated Press last week in which he defended construction of a 670-mile-long fence along the 2,000-mile border, Chertoff claimed that the fence will actually be better for the environment.

“Illegal immigrants really degrade the environment. I’ve seen pictures of human waste, garbage, discarded bottles and other human artifacts in pristine areas,” Chertoff said. “And believe me, that is the worst thing you can do to the environment.”

Is he serious? I asked myself when I first read this statement, as I was about to come to Mexico. Does the secretary of homeland security really believe that the human waste and discarded bottles left behind by undocumented immigrants crossing the desert is such a major environmental threat?

What about the tens of millions of tons of discarded bottles, aluminum cans, cell phones, computers and tires that those of us who are legal residents or U.S. citizens dump every year? What about the toxic gases that we send into the atmosphere with our ridiculously big Hummers?

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Americans throw away annually nearly 5 million tons of beer and soft drink bottles, and 800,000 tons of beer and soft drink aluminum cans, not counting those that are recycled.

Worse, Americans dump 127 million tons of plastic bags, and 2.5 million tons of discarded batteries, excluding those that are recycled.

Ridiculous

But, as seen from Mexico, Chertoff’s claim looks even more ridiculous. Northern Mexico states have long been complaining about the avalanche of smuggled U.S. tires that are piling up in dumps on the Mexican side of the border (there are an estimated 6 million tires in Sonora state dumps alone).

They also fear that the border fence will seriously threaten endangered species, such as the Sonora pronghorn, the black bear, and wild cat species.

Sonora state environmental agency director Cesar Salazar Platt told me that there are fewer than 500 Sonora pronghorns — a kind of antelope — left in the world, and they’re all living along the Sonora-Arizona border. The border fence will obstruct these animals’ ability to go after food or to seek mates to reproduce in their natural habitat, he said.

“If we don’t give them the genetic freedom to mix without barriers, they won’t reproduce, and their population will diminish rapidly,” Salazar Platt told me. “The same goes for American lions, or pumas, and jaguars.”

My opinion: Chertoff’s remarks are the latest Bush administration capitulation to the anti-Hispanic immigrant hype that is sweeping U.S. cable television networks and radio talk shows.

The level of on-air insanity — and its growing acceptance by U.S. government officials and most Republican presidential candidates — is becoming dangerous.

For the record, I’m not for unregulated immigration, nor do I think we should condone littering along the border.

Talk show hysteria

But the growing cable television and radio talk show hysteria claming undocumented workers are security threats (despite the fact that not one single of the Sept. 11 terrorists entered the United States through the Mexican border) or environmental threats (despite the fact that those of us who live legally in America are by most standards the biggest polluters on earth) is ridiculous.

The Bush administration should be ashamed of joining the chorus of fear-mongers.

And it should know that the up to $34 billion that may be spent on the border fence will be a monumental waste of money: As long as the income gap between the United States and Mexico remains as huge as it is, unauthorized immigrants will always find a way to cross the border.

X Andres Oppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.