Sierra Club online action - write your Senator opposing more border walls‏

The Sierra Club has an online action that is now live. Click on the link, fill in your information, and send an email to your Senators telling them to reject any proposals to build more border walls.

o Border action alert update – Sierra Club live now! action.sierraclub.org/demintwall

Nearly 670 mills of fences and walls have already been constructed along our Southwestern International border, separating families, fracturing wildlife corridors, and scarring the region’s unique natural and cultural resources.

Now a number of politicians have called for yet another set of walls along the US / Mexico border, which would continue to come at great expense to local communities, ecosystems, and the American Taxpayer.

Please write your senators and say ‘NO’ to another set of border walls.

For more info. on the strong likelihood that the new Congress will push for more border walls, read the No Border Wall blog:

http://notexasborderwall.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-congress-will-try-to-build-more.html

Tell Senator Schumer that Border Walls are NOT Immigration Reform!

Senator Charles Schumer will be crafting Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation over the August recess, and has announced that he will introduce it around Labor Day. While it should be good news that immigration reform may finally be addressed, it looks like Schumer plans to include more border walls in the bill. If walls are part of the bill that he introduces it will be extremely difficult to strip them out. We may even see a repeat of 2006, in which border walls were part of competing immigration reform bills in the House and Senate. Those reform efforts died, and their border wall provisions were turned into the Secure Fence Act.

In a June press release, Schumer listed 7 principles that will form the basis of Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Principles 1 & 2 are:

1. Illegal immigration is wrong, and a primary goal of comprehensive immigration reform must be to dramatically curtail future illegal immigration.

2. Operational control of our borders--through significant additional increases in infrastructure, technology, and border personnel--must be achieved within a year of enactment of legislation.

http://schumer.senate.gov/new_website/record.cfm?id=314990

Senator Schumer recently voted for Senator DeMint's amendment, which calls for hundreds of miles of border wall.

It is critical that we pressure Senator Schumer to keep border walls out of his immigration reform bill. A good start would be to flood his office with phone calls, faxes, and emails. Below is a sample letter that anyone can copy and send along, but it is important to remember that phone calls and personal letters will have more impact. The important thing is to stress that border walls must NOT be part of immigration reform.

There is a form on Schumer's website that you can use to write to him here:
http://schumer.senate.gov/new_website/contact.cfm
But again, phone calls and personalized letters will be the most effective.

Senator Charles Schumer

313 Hart Senate Building

Washington , DC 20510

202-224-6542

Dear Senator Schumer,

I was extremely disappointed by your vote for Senator DeMint’s amendment calling for more border walls, and I am worried that you plan to include border walls in Comprehensive Immigration Reform. While immigration reform is needed, border walls should not be part of it.

The walls that already scar the borderlands have not stopped desperate immigrants from entering the United States . Border Patrol spokespersons refer to them as “speed bumps,” and say that they only slow crossers by 5 minutes. The Congressional Research Service determined that border walls have “no discernible impact” on the number of undocumented immigrants who successfully cross our borders.

While they fail at their intended purpose, border walls have serious negative impacts, including:

· Pushing thousands of border crossers into the desert, where hundreds die each year. The GAO found that after walls were built near San Diego the number of annual deaths in the desert doubled, and in the past decade over 5,000 bodies have been recovered.

· Inflicting tremendous environmental damage, including the severing of wildlife migration corridors, the destruction of endangered species habitat, the sedimentation of rivers, and unprecedented harm to designated Wilderness Areas, National Monuments, Wildlife Refuges, and preserves owned by Audubon and the Nature Conservancy.

· Condemning the property of hundreds of landowners who live along the border. Farmers, ranchers, and homeowners, some of whose property has been passed down for generations, have been hauled into court and had their lands taken to make way for border walls.

· $3.1 billion has already been spent on border walls, and the DeMint amendment will cost another $2.7 billion. Our nation cannot afford to waste billions more on “speed bumps.”

Including more border walls in Comprehensive Immigration Reform would sacrifice more landowners, ecosystems, and the lives of hundreds of immigrants just to attract a few votes.

As Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said this past February, “you cannot build a fence from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, and call that an immigration policy.”

Border walls have no place in immigration reform. Don’t sacrifice the border to pass the bill.

Write Congress to Protest Chertoff's Waiver of Laws on the Border!

Invoking the power granted by the Real ID Act to waive any law that he sees fit to build walls on the border, DHS Secretary Chertoff has suspended 36 federal laws. This allows him to begin border wall construction immediately, regardless of the damage that they will do to communities and the environment. Homes will be bulldozed, farms will be sliced in half, and endnagered species will be driven to extinction. The Real ID Act makes a mockery of the notion of the rule of law.

We must flood Congress with calls, letters, and emails demanding that they immediately repeal section 102 of the Real ID Act and rescind the waivers that Chertoff has issued.

Contact you Representative today and let them know that since they enacted the Real ID Act, it is up to them to repeal it and undo the damage. You can contact House members using the House of Representatives website:

https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml

Contact your US Senators and let them know that they too bear responsibility for undermining the rule of law, and must act immediately to repeal section 102 of the Real ID Act. You can contact your Senators using the Senate's website:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

The No Border Wall Coalition will be sending the following letter to members of Congress. Feel free to quote or paraphrase from it when you call or write your elected representatives.

############################

Representative,

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has “waived in their entirety” 36 federal laws along the entire United States southern border from San Diego, California to Brownsville, Texas. This represents an unprecedented abuse of authority on Secretary Chertoff’s part, and clearly demonstrates the need for an immediate repeal of section 102 of the Real ID Act.

Obeying the law is not voluntary, it is mandatory, and Secretary Chertoff cannot legitimately claim to be sweeping aside a host of laws on the border in defense of immigration laws. In a nation of laws all laws must be respected, not just those that are convenient.

Equal protection under the law is meant to be a fundamental right shared by every American, but the Real ID Act makes the legal rights of citizens who live near the border conditional on Secretary Chertoff’s whims. Section 102 of the Real ID Act of 2005 states, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive all legal requirements such Secretary, in such Secretary’s sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section.” No one else is granted this extreme power under any circumstance. The President cannot waive our nation’s laws even in times of national crisis, and Secretary Chertoff cannot waive the laws that protect citizens who live away from the border. Only border residents may have their legal protections waived.

The only reason for Secretary Chertoff to waive these laws is because he knows that construction of the border wall will break them. In announcing the Real ID Act waivers Secretary Chertoff said, "Criminal activity at the border does not stop for endless debate or protracted litigation." The waivers are an admission that the border wall will itself violate these 36 federal laws, making construction of the wall a criminal act. If Chertoff is genuinely concerned with criminal activity he should ensure that the agency that he oversees complies with the law. Instead, by setting these 36 federal laws aside, Secretary Chertoff sets himself above the law.

Congress must not allow unchecked power to remain in the hands of an unelected administration appointee. As James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands… may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” Allowing one man to overrule laws passed by Congress and signed by the President for the express intent of circumventing judicial oversight is un-American.

The No Border Wall Coalition calls on Congress to repeal section 102 of the Real ID Act and restore the rule of law. The waivers already written must be rescinded so that citizens whose only offense is the location of their homes may again be afforded the full protection of all of our nation’s laws. In passing the Real ID Act Congress created this situation, and it is now up to Congress to remedy it.