The Case for Open Borders

by John Washington

A 2017 study from the Center for Biological Diversity found that wall construction along the US–Mexico border is having “disastrous impacts on our most vulnerable wildlife,” including ninety-three threatened species put at risk of extinction due to ongoing wall construction. The imperiled animals include jaguars, jaguarundi, Quino checkerspot butterflies, arroyo toads, California red-legged frogs, black-spotted newts, Pacific pond turtles, and Mexican gray wolves. Another of the endangered species, the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl, are low flyers and can’t make it over the border wall; their territory is thus sliced in half by immigration policy. Cryptobiotic soil, or biological soil crust, is also imperiled by wall construction. The rare “living soil” is a dynamic crust made up of mosses, microfungi, bacteria, and one of the earliest known life-forms, cyanobacteria. Lacing parts of the desert landscape, the intricate organic ménage helps combat erosion by keeping soil stuck together and retaining water that roots can tap into to survive dry and hot conditions. When cryptobiotic soil is driven over by vehicles, the National Park Service concludes, it “may never fully recover.”