My friend Larry Audsley wrote a great piece in a recent Arizona Wildlife Federation newsletter. You can view the article and entire newsletter online here Arizona Wildlife News - Summer 2010

A snippet of the article:

A complete inventory of the resource damage associated with illegal immigration and smuggling would be a daunting undertaking. The impacts aren’t limited to the immediate border but extend many miles into Arizona’s interior and affect high-value places for flora and fauna. Thus anyone who cares
about wildlife and Arizona’s ecological health should want to suppress rampant illegal entry. Despite some publicized smugglers’ stunts involving ramps and even cranes getting trucks across the barriers, it’s
clear that fences and vehicle barriers make illegal crossings harder. The question, though, is whether physical barriers actually suppress illegal immigration or merely divert it to other locations where the obstacles are weaker. Experience seems to show that illegal entrants respond to new or strengthened barriers by shifting activity to weaker points. It’s been widely noted that improved fencing in Texas
and California was followed by a spike in border crossings in Arizona, where barriers were fewer and weaker. The same dynamic seems to have occurred within Arizona as the fencing was going up in Cochise County. When the US economy gets going full bore again and high demand for unskilled labor returns, we may find that the present fences and vehicle barriers will shift Arizona’s immigrant super-highway into some of
the state’s best wild country.

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