Dear Senator Feinstein/Boxer,
You recently voted in the affirmative for an amendment to H.R. 2892 requiring the completion of at least 700 miles of reinforced fence along the southwest border before December 31, 2010. I am writing to express my disappointment at your vote and to urge you to reconsider your stance on the question of border fencing.
Having recently returned from a church youth group trip to Tucson, AZ and Nogales, Mexico, I have personally seen the blight that these walls are to the landscape. The Sierra Club Borderlands Campaign has thoroughly documented the damaging effect of border wall on animal species, vegetation, and community infrastructure. Lengths of border wall are ugly and damaging to the otherwise picturesque landscape of the American southwest.
Furthermore, these walls are ineffective. One Border Patrol spokesperson has referred to them as "Speed bumps in the desert." Professor Wayne Cornelius of the University of California San Diego studied the efficacy of border walls for over a decade and concluded: "the border enforcement build-up seems to have made no appreciable difference in terms of migrants’ ability to enter the United States clandestinely.”
I urge you to reconsider your support of new lengths of border fence. While supporting these new additions helps classify a legislator as "tough on security," the evidence shows that this is not a security issue; you won't find a single Border Patrol agent who has apprehended someone with terrorist intentions. The high price of these fences make their construction, while lucrative for contractors, devastating and irresponsible for the federal government, especially in a time of financial crisis, when health care providers, schools, and other essential social institutions are suffering from a lack of funds. Please reconsider how you vote on this issue, and vote "nay" on any new border fences.
Sincerely,
Not Prince Hamlet
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