1AC

Cartels Advantage
US drone surveillance along the US Mexico border is high now
Elliot Spagat The Associated Press, Elliot Spagat is a San Diego Correspondent
that specializes in border related incidents. Elliot Spagat has been published by the
Washington Post, Time Magazine, Huffington Post and over 100 other sources. 1113-2014, "Drones replacing officers in Mexican border surveillance," Los Angeles
Daily News, http://www.dailynews.com/social-affairs/20141113/drones-replacingofficers-in-mexican-border-surveillance
The U.S. government now patrols nearly half the Mexican border
by drones alone in a largely unheralded shift to control desolate stretches where
there are no agents, camera towers, ground sensors or fences, and it plans to
expand the strategy to the Canadian border . It represents a significant departure from a decadesSIERRA VISTA, Ariz. >>

old approach that emphasizes boots on the ground and fences. Since 2000, the number of Border Patrol agents on
the 1,954-mile border more than doubled to surpass 18,000 and fencing multiplied nine times to 700 miles .

Under the new approach, Predator B aerial drones, used in the fight against insurgents in
Afghanistan, sweep remote mountains, canyons and rivers with a high-resolution video
camera and return within three days for another video in the same spot, two officials
with direct knowledge of the effort said on condition of anonymity because details have not been made public. The
two videos are then overlaid for analysts, who use sophisticated software to identify
tiny changes perhaps the tracks of a farmer or cows, perhaps those of
immigrants who entered the country illegally or perhaps a drug-laden Hummer , they
said. About 92 percent of drone missions have shown no change in terrain , while the
others raised enough questions to dispatch agents to determine if someone got
away, sometimes by helicopter because the area is so remote. The agents look for
any sign of human activity footprints, broken twigs, trash. About 4 percent of
missions have been false alarms, like tracks of livestock or farmers, and about 2 percent are
inconclusive. The remaining 2 percent offer evidence of illegal crossings from Mexico,
which typically results in ground sensors being planted for closer monitoring. The
government has operated about 10,000 drone flights under the strategy, known
internally as change detection, since it began in March 2013. The flights currently
cover about 900 miles, much of it in Texas, and are expected to expand to the Canadian border by
the end of 2015. The purpose is to assign agents where illegal activity is highest, said R. Gil Kerlikowske,
commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrols parent agency, which operates nine unmanned
aircraft across the country. You have finite resources, he said in an interview. If you can look at some very rugged
terrain (and) you can see theres not traffic, whether its tire tracks or clothing being abandoned or anything else,
you want to deploy your resources to where you have a greater risk, a greater threat. If the video shows the terrain
unchanged, Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher calls it proving the negative showing there isnt anything illegal
happening there and therefore no need for agents and fences. The strategy was launched without fanfare and is
being expanded as President Barack Obama prepares to issue an executive order by the end of this year to reduce
deportations and enhance border security. Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who chairs the House
Homeland Security Committee, applauded the approach while noting surveillance gaps still remain. We

can no
longer focus only on static defenses such as fences and fixed (camera) towers, he
said. Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican who coauthored legislation last year
to add 20,000 Border Patrol agents and 350 miles of fencing to the southwest
border, said, If there are better ways of ensuring the border is secure, I am
certainly open to considering those options. Border missions fly out of Sierra Vista, home of the
U.S. Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, or Corpus Christi, Texas. They patrol at altitudes between 19,000 at

28,000 feet and from between 25 and 60 miles of the border. The first step is for Border Patrol sector chiefs to

Analysts scour the

drone videos at operations centers in Riverside; Grand Forks, North Dakota; and
Sierra Vista. After an initial survey, the drones return within a week for another
sweep. Privacy advocates have raised concerns about drones since Customs and Border Protection introduced
identify areas least likely to attract smugglers, typically those far from towns and roads.

them in 2006, saying there is potential to monitor innocent people under no suspicion. Lothar Eckardt, the agencys
executive director of national air security operations, said law-abiding people shouldnt worry and that cameras are
unable to capture details like license plate numbers and faces on the ground. He looked on one September morning
as a drone taxied down a runway in Sierra Vista, lifted off with a muffled buzz and disappeared over a rocky
mountain range into a blue Arizona sky. About a dozen computer screens line the wall of their trailer, showing the

Eckardt said there is no silver bullet for

addressing border security but that using drones in highly remote areas is part of
the overall effort. If theres nothing there, he said, lets not waste the manpower here. Lets focus our efforts
weather, maps and real-time images of the ground below.

someplace else, where theyre needed.

Increased US-Mexico border surveillance increases the cartels

power as immigrants turn to human trafficking
NOWRASTEH 14 (ALEX NOWRASTEH, immigration policy analyst at the Cato
Institutes Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, 2/30/14, Immigration
Enforcement Aids Smugglers Unaccompanied Children Edition, Cato Institute,
http://www.cato.org/blog/immigration-enforcement-aids-smugglers-unaccompaniedchildren-edition)

The increase of human smugglers transporting unauthorized immigrants to

the United States is likely a consequence of more effective border
enforcement. Although the Obama administration has de-emphasized internal immigration
enforcement after 2011, his administration has ramped up enforcement along the
border focusing on increasing the legal and economic costs imposed on
unlawful immigrants apprehended while trying to enter the United States.
Since border and internal enforcement are substitutes, the shift in resources
and increase in penalties for unlawful crossers does not represent a decrease
in total enforcement. Matt Graham from the Bipartisan Policy Center wrote an excellent breakdown of the
reprioritization of immigration enforcement, the increase in penalties, and how it has deterred unauthorized
immigration. The price of smuggling is an indication of the effectiveness of immigration enforcement along the
border. The first effect of increased enforcement is to decrease the supply of human smugglers. As the supply of
human smugglers decreases, the price that remaining human smugglers can charge increases .

Before
border enforcement tightened in the early 1990s, migrants typically paid
about $725 (2014 dollars). Currently, unauthorized migrants from Central
America are paying around $7500. The economics of industrial organization can
shed some light on why smugglers have shifted from mom and pop operations to large,
organized, and violent criminal cartels who now seek children clients instead of adults .
Mom and pop smugglers ran small and unsophisticated operations to smuggle immigrants over the border . As border patrol
cracked down on them and put many out of business, more intensive smuggling
operations that required more capital, planning, and violence to overcome enforcement
were needed to satisfy the demand. As a result of the shrinking mom and pop smuggling
operations, serious criminal organizations and drug gangs have become specialized in

smuggling migrants because of the higher profits. The shift from mom and pop
smugglers to sophisticated criminal smugglers that focus on smuggling those with an
inelastic demand for smuggling is the result of larger and more effective border
enforcement.

Increased violence causes Mexico Failed State

Pedigo 12

(David Pedigo, M.A. candidate at top-ranked university with experience in economic and financial
modeling and a professional background in international affairs and journalism, The Drug War and State Failure in
Mexico,
http://research.monm.edu/mjur/files/2012/2012-7.pdf)

Few topics are more relevant to the national security of the United States today
than the crisis in Mexico, which threatens to create a failed state on the southern
border. In 2009, noted international relations scholar John Mearsheimer listed the ongoing drug war in Mexico as
the number one issue that had been overlooked by President Obama, saying that , There is the very real
possibility that Mexico will implode on Obama's watch and become a failed state,
which would surely cause serious problems north of the Rio Grande. 1 This claim has
been echoed by Steven David, another eminent scholar in the field of international relations, who states in his book,
Catastrophic Consequences, that, there is no question that if violent instability engulfs Mexico, American vital

of the
most widely accepted indicators of state failure is what Max Weber referred to as
the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a states territory. In
other words, failed states emerge when the ultimate authority to provide security and
enforce the rule of law comes from a power other than the state.3 By this
qualification, Mexico certainly is not a failed state today, but it does exhibit many
characteristics of a captured state, wherein the state itself is manipulated by
other actors -- in this case drug cartels. There are also some regions throughout
Mexicos territory where drug cartels have more influence over the rule of law than
the state, and can therefore be considered failed provinces or failed cities. In
these regions, cartels freely murder mayors, police officers, and journalists that
challenge their authority, sometimes within feet of police posts. Not only is the Mexican
state unable to provide security for its population, but cartels have increasingly influenced
government policy through intimidating, killing, or buying off state actors. As both
Mearsheimer and David suggest, state failure in Mexico would have devastating
effects for the United States. Some of the violence and lawlessness of the drug war
in Mexico have already begun to leak across the border. In 2005, the governors of
Arizona and New Mexico declared their border regions with Mexico to be a disaster
area on the grounds that they were devastated by human smuggling, drug smuggling,
interests would be threatened.2 112 While no single definition of a failed state currently exists, one

kidnapping, murder, and destruction of property.4 There have also been recent concerns over southern Arizona

These instances lend credibility to the

presupposition that failed cities like the ones in Mexico may begin to emerge in
the United States as well if Mexicos recent trends are not reversed
becoming a no-go zone controlled by drug traffickers.5

Mexican state collapse causes WMD conflict

Manwaring 5 (Max G., Retired U.S. Army colonel and an Adjunct Professor of International Politics at
Dickinson College, venezuelas hugo chvez, bolivarian socialism, and asymmetric warfare, October 2005, pg.
PUB628.pdf)
President Chvez also understands that the process leading to state failure is the most dangerous long-term security
challenge facing the global community today. The argument in general is that failing and failed state status is the
breeding ground for instability, criminality, insurgency, regional conflict, and terrorism. These conditions breed
massive humanitarian disasters and major refugee flows. They can host evil networks of all kinds, whether they involve
criminal business enterprise, narco-trafficking, or some form of ideological crusade such as Bolivarianismo. More
specifically, these conditions spawn all kinds of things people in general do not like such as murder, kidnapping, corruption,
intimidation, and destruction of infrastructure. These means of coercion and persuasion can spawn further
human rights violations, torture, poverty, starvation, disease, the recruitment and use of child soldiers, trafficking in
women and body parts, trafficking and proliferation of conventional weapons systems and WMD, genocide, ethnic
cleansing, warlordism, and criminal anarchy. At the same time, these actions are usually unconfined and spill over
into regional syndromes of poverty, destabilization, and conflict.62 Perus Sendero Luminoso calls violent and
destructive activities that facilitate the processes of state failure armed propaganda. Drug cartels operating throughout the Andean
Ridge of South America and elsewhere call these activities business incentives. Chvez considers these actions to be

steps that must be taken to bring about the political conditions necessary to establish Latin American socialism
for the 21st century.63 Thus, in addition to helping to provide wider latitude to further their tactical and operational objectives,
state and nonstate actors strategic efforts are aimed at progressively lessening a targeted regimes credibility and capability in
terms of its ability and willingness to govern and develop its national territory and society. Chvezs intent is to focus his

primary attack politically and psychologically on selected Latin American governments ability and right to
govern. In that context, he understands that popular perceptions of corruption, disenfranchisement, poverty, and lack of upward
mobility limit the right and the ability of a given regime to conduct the business of the state. Until a given populace generally
perceives that its government is dealing with these and other basic issues of political, economic, and social injustice fairly and
effectively, instability and the threat of subverting or destroying such a government are real.64 But failing and failed
states simply do not go away. Virtually anyone can take advantage of such an unstable situation. The tendency is that the best
motivated and best armed organization on the scene will control that instability. As a consequence, failing and failed states
become dysfunctional states, rogue states, criminal states, narco-states , or new peoples democracies. In connection
with the creation of new peoples democracies, one can rest assured that Chvez and his Bolivarian populist allies will be available
to provide money, arms, and leadership at any given opportunity. And, of course, the longer dysfunctional, rogue, criminal,

and narco-states and peoples democracies persist, the more they and theirassociated problems endanger
global security, peace, and prosperity.65

RELATIONS ADVANTAGE
Border surveillance has been increased in the squo, and
without major changes it will be increasing for decades to
come
Bosque 15 (Melissa del Bosque, March 2nd, 2015, Death on Sevenmile Road,
Texas Observer, http://www.texasobserver.org/human-cost-border-security-build-up/,
AZ)
At the height of the Central American exodus in July, DPS launched another surge
called Operation Strong Safety. Armored gunboats patrolled the Rio Grande with
DPS troopers, rangers and game wardens dressed in body armor and tactical gear.
Texas National Guard soldiers were also deployed, despite the fact that the
thousands of migrants, mostly women and children, were making a point of
presenting themselves to authorities to ask for asylum. Operation Strong Safety is
slated to continue into August 2015 at a cost of more than $2 million a week .
Recently, newly elected Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have
indicated they would like to make the surge permanent. By 2016, the state will have
spent more than $1 billion in state and federal money on border security over the
last decade. And its poised to spend much more in the decade to come.

This surveillance continually slows trade along the border

Uriba 13 ( MNica Ortize Uribe, 6-4-2013, "Delays At The Border, Delays For
Business," Fronteras Desk, http://www.fronterasdesk.org/news/2013/jun/04/delaysborder-delays-business/, AZ)
EL PASO, Texas -- When it comes to the southern border, the United States
Congress wants to put up a big red stoplight: Stop the flow of drugs, stop
illegal immigration and stop the terrorists. Last year Congress spent more on
securing the border than it did on all federal law enforcement combined . Critics
argue the lockdown at the border chokes billions of dollars worth of
legitimate traffic. Alejandro Rivera is a big rig trucker who chauffeurs goods
between the U.S.-Mexico border for an American logistics company based in El Paso,
Texas. On a good day he'll accomplish two round-trips, rarely adding more than 70
miles to his odometer. "Since the 9/11 everything changed," Rivera said. "Before we
used to cross in five minutes, ten minutes. Now it takes us about three hours, two
hours, because of the long lines." Rivera referred to long lines at the border
crossing. It's a complaint echoed from San Diego to Brownsville. Some five million
trucks per year are subject to costly delays as a result of rigorous security measures
put in place in the last decade. These delays affect the timeliness of a truckers
delivery. Photo by Mnica Ortiz Uribe A factory worker in Ciudad Jurez spray paints
mannequins that will ship to retail stores throughout the United States. "These big
lines have economic costs. Billions of dollars a year in lost growth for the United
States and Mexico," said Chris Wilson, who studies the economics of trade for the
Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. Wilson said trade between the U.S.

and Mexico quintupled in the last 20 years. Some 6 million U.S. jobs depend on
trade with Mexico. That includes companies like Dell and Ford as well as smaller
businesses that make medical devices or auto parts.

A focus on security dilutes any funds meant for border

infrastructure- the plan is a prerequisite to improving
infrastructure meaningfully
Barry 11 Tom Barry is a senior analyst at the Center for International Policy in
Washington, DC (tom barry, June 14, 2011, Border Security Congestion, Border
Lines, http://borderlinesblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/border-security-congestion.html,
AZ)
Over the past decade the U.S. government has focused more on hindering
crossborder traffic with Mexico than on facilitating the legal crossing of people and
goods. On balance, border crossings have been considered more as a threat than as
a fundamental benefit to both nations. Most of this attention has been focused on
northbound traffic. However, since 2009, the U.S. government has been increasingly
monitoring, and thereby slowing, southbound traffic to detect flows of weapons and
illegally generated cash. U.S.-Mexico trade constitutes a palpable national interest
nearly $400 billion annually (with U.S. exports of $229 billion in 2010 much larger
than $163 billion imports from Mexico). About 80 percent of this trade is carried by
railcars and truck across land ports of entry (POE). However, the importance of
binational trade and society doesnt imply that we should be spending billions of
dollars more on further upgrading our ports of entry and increasing personnel, as
many border politicians insist. Border politicians led by U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes (DTX) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), for example, introduced a bill in 2010 that would
provide $5 billion in emergency funding to hire 5,000 new CBP agents to staff the
POEs and to upgrade the POE infrastructure, contending that border trade needs
have been neglected. Too much funding in the past ten years has been directed to
the bordernot only security funding but also funding for new and overhauled POEs
as well as a steady expansion of CBP agents assigned to the POEs. There is no
question that maddeningly slow border crossings adversely affect
binational economic relations. Yet the main problem at the POEs is not
staffing or infrastructure inadequacies. It is the intense scrutiny of all
border crossers in the name of border security. In the wake of 9/11, rigorous
inspection practices stemmed from homeland security concerns about foreign
terrorists. Over time the border security justification for stepped-up inspections at
POEs and checkpoints has expanded from counterterrorism to supporting Mexicos
drug war. In practice, though, the inspections are wildly disconnected from actual
security threats and mostly net the products of flawed U.S. policies that foster
illegal crossings, including gun rights policies that allow sales of military-grade
weapons and drug policies that foster illegal crossborder flows.

***Improved ports of entry along the border are key to trade

and mexico relations,
Crawford 13 (Amanda Crawford, 5-15-2013, "Border Delays Cost U.S. $7.8
Billion as Fence Is Focus," Bloomberg,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-05-15/border-delays-cost-u-s-7-8billion-as-fence-is-focus, AZ)
May 15 (Bloomberg) -- Delays at U.S.-Mexico border crossings cost the U.S.
economy $7.8 billion in 2011, as improvements have lagged behind traffic growth
and the political focus has been on securing the rest of the border. The toll could
balloon to $14.7 billion annually if the value of U.S.-Mexico truck trade reaches $463
billion by 2020 as predicted, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. As the U.S.
Senate debates an overhaul of the nations immigration system, the focus on
fencing and securing remote stretches of the southern border has
overshadowed long-needed improvements in technology, infrastructure
and staffing at the land ports, said Matthew Hummer, a senior transportation
analyst for Bloomberg Government. I think the most important issue here is
stabilizing the two economies, and the ports of entry do that: They facilitate trade
and create job opportunities, said Hummer, the author of a Bloomberg Government
report on the border. If Mexicans have jobs in Mexico they are less likely to come to
the U.S. Net Mexican migration dropped to zero from 2005 to 2010, amid
strengthening economic conditions in Mexico, heightened border enforcement and
other factors, according to a Pew Research Center study last year. The Mexican
economy has grown at about twice the pace of the U.S. since the end of 2009.
Remote Areas U.S. investment has remained focused on controlling the rest of the
border between the crossings, including remote areas such as the Arizona desert. In
the past decade, the number of Border Patrol agents more than doubled while the
number of Customs and Border Protection officers, who staff the ports of entry, has
remained at about the same level, according to a report by the Washington-based
Woodrow Wilson Centers Mexico Institute and partner institutions. Congressional
funding for the areas between the ports has eclipsed that for the authorized entry
points since 2007, even though the crossings have faced enhanced security
requirements, increasing trade and evidence that drugs and dangerous individuals
are more likely to cross there, according to the Mexico Institute report. That focus
continues in the current immigration debate in the Senate. The plan crafted by the
so-called Gang of Eight bipartisan senators, which is being considered by the
Judiciary Committee today, aims to secure Republican support by tying immigrants
path to citizenship to the ability of the U.S. Border Patrol to stop 90 percent of illegal
traffic across the southern border between the official ports of entry. There is no
similar metric for the efficiency or security of the land ports. Less Attention The
way the border is currently run is costing the U.S. a lot in terms of jobs and the
economy, said Christopher Wilson, an associate with the Mexico Institute and coauthor of his groups report on border trade. In the context of the current
immigration debate, we are very focused on what is going on between the ports of
entry while this major issue, which is about security but also about jobs and the

economy, is getting a lot less attention. Focusing politically on the rest of the
border is easier than facing the challenges of running effective ports of entry, said
Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, a
Washington-based group critical of increased immigration. While the land ports
probably do need more investment in infrastructure, there also should be much
more stringent security, including entry and exit checks to catch those who
overstay legal visits, he said. It seems to some extent we put too much emphasis
on the ease of movement across the border, Camarota said. The border is not
simply an obstacle to be overcome by businesses and travelers. It is the part where
our country begins, and it is vitally important for security and immigration control.
Modernizing Ports Modernizing land ports of entry, which average more than 40
years old and were built before the increased security requirements implemented
after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, would cost $6 billion according to a
2011 Customs and Border Protection report. About half of that cost would be for the
southern border, according to the Bloomberg Government analysis. The Senate bill
includes funding for 3,500 additional Customs officers and earmarks $6.5 billion for
border security. With the bills metrics tied to security elsewhere on the
border, though, thats where most of the money will probably go, Hummer
said. Achieving the security metrics in the Gang of Eight bill will likely divert
funds away from land ports of entry, Hummer said.

Increased trade benefits all levels of Mexican Society

increases quality of life and takes away power from the
repressive government.
DeLong, professor of Economics at Cal, 2K, J. Bradford DeLong,
professor of Economics and chair of the Political Economy major at the University of
California, Berkeley. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the United States
Department of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration under Lawrence Summers.
He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and is
a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, NAFTA's (Qualified)
Success, http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/TotW/nafta.html Mollie
It is time to conclude that NAFTA--the North American Free Trade Agreement--is a
success. It is nearly seven years since the ratification of NAFTA, nearly seven years
since then-Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen argued and President Clinton decided
that NAFTA should be the second major initiative of his administration. The major
argument for NAFTA was that it was the best thing the United States could do to
raise the chances for Mexico to become democratic and prosperous, and that the
United States had both a strong interest and a neighborly duty to try to help
Mexican political and economic development. By that yardstick NAFTA has been a
clear success. NAFTA has helped Mexico economically. Over the past five years real
GDP has grown at 5.5 percent per year. Even including the sharp shock of the 1995
peso crisis, Mexican real GDP has grown at 3.8 percent per year since the
ratification of NAFTA. The urban unemployment rate that was 6 percent in 1992 and
rose to 8.5 percent in 1995 is now less than 4 percent. The Mexican boom has been

led by the manufacturing, construction, transportation, and communications

sectors. Most of all, the Mexican boom has been led by exports: next year Mexico's
real exports will be more than three times as large as they were at the ratification of
NAFTA, and as a share of GDP exports have grown from a little more than 10 to 17
percent. It is here--in the growing volume of exports and in the building-up of export
industries--that NAFTA has made the difference. Four-fifths of Mexico's exports go to
the United States. More than two-thirds of Mexico's imports come from the United
States. NAFTA guarantees Mexican producers tariff- and quota-free access to the
American market. Without this guarantee, a smaller number of Mexican exporters
would dare try to develop the strong links with the market north of the Rio Grande
that have enabled them to sell their exports. Without this guarantee, few--either in
Mexico or from overseas--would have dared to invest in the manufacturing capacity
that has allowed Mexico to satisfy United States demand. Without NAFTA's
guarantee of tariff- and quota-free access to the American market, we would not
have seen the rise in trade within industries between Mexico and the U.S. over the
past half decade. Rising intra-industry trade means that Mexico and the U.S. are
moving toward a greater degree of specialization and a finer division of labor in
important industries like autos--where labor-intensive portions are more and more
done in Mexico--and textiles--where the U.S. increasingly does high-tech spinning
and weaving and Mexico increasingly does lower-tech cutting and sewing. As
economists Mary Burfisher, Sherman Robinson, and Karen Thierfelder put it, NAFTA
has nurtured the growth of productivity through "Smithian" efficiency gains that
result from "widen[ing] the exent of the market" and capturing "increasing returns
to finer specialization." Without NAFTA, would Mexican domestic savings have
doubled as a share of GDP since the early 1990s? Surely not. Without NAFTA, would
the number of telephone lines in Mexico have doubled in the 1990s? Probably not.
Moreover, Mexican exports are by no means low-tech labor- and primary productintensive goods. More than 20 percent of all Mexican exports are capital goods.
More than 70 percent of Mexican manufacturing exports are metal products.
Without NAFTA, would U.S. big three auto producers have invested in the Mexican
auto industry, and would Mexican exports of autos and auto parts to the U.S. have
grown from $10 to $30 billion a year? Surely not. More important, NAFTA has helped
Mexico politically. Strong economic growth makes political reform much, much
easier: reslicing a growing pie is possible under many circumstances where reslicing
a static pie is not. AIncreasing economic integration brings with it pressures for
increasing political integration as well: the liquidation of the statist-corporatist PRI
order, and a shift toward democratic institutions that are more like those of the
industrial democracies that Mexico hopes to join (and to which mexico hopes that
NAFTA will serve as a passport of admission). The result has been the first
peaceful transfer of power in Mexico in more than a lifetime, with the
election to the Mexican presidency of Vicente Fox Queseda. Economist Dani Rodrik
describes political democracy as a powerful meta-institution for building the political
and economic institutions needed for success: thus Mexico's future looks much
brighter now than it did back in the late 1980s when the dominant PRI regularly
stole elections and held a hammerlock on Mexico's government.

Top Mexican officials sees border securitization as an

unwillingness to cooperate; the plan is key to increase
relations
Rueda 13 ( Manuel Rueda, June 26, 2013, Mexico Slams U.S. Border Buildup
Plan, ABC News, http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/News/mexico-slams-usimmigration-reform-bills-proposed-border/story?id=19495974, AZ)
It took a while, but after several calls for action from prominent intellectuals, the
Mexican government finally said something about the United States' proposed plans
to scale up security on its side of the border. Mexico's Secretary of Foreign Affairs,
Jose Meade, read a statement to reporters Tuesday afternoon in which he criticized
a U.S. bill that would add 700 miles of border fencing and double the number of
Border Patrol agents, in exchange for the legalization of 11 million undocumented
immigrants. "We are convinced that fences do not unite [both nations]," Meade
said. "The enlargement of this wall is not congruent with plans to create a modern
and secure border, and to develop the region." Meade thanked the U.S. government
for the bill's main aim: trying to establish a legal status for millions of
undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., many of whom are Mexican. But he
said that plans for increased fencing and patrolling - which have been attached to
immigration reform efforts by conservative politicians - would hamper commerce
along the border and disrupt the lives of 14 million people who live in counties on
either side of the fence. "Our country has let the U.S. government know that
measures which will affect the links between communities do not coincide with the
principles of good neighborship and shared responsibility," Meade said in typical
diplomatic parlance. His criticisms may sound tame, but they actually mark an
interesting shift in the Mexican government's position on the immigration reform
debate. In recent years, the administrations of Presidents Enrique Pea Nieto and
Felipe Caldern had stayed strictly on the sidelines of that debate, reluctant to issue
any pronouncements that might stoke U.S. worries about Mexican intervention in
American affairs. Some analysts have also argued that any Mexican declarations
could be used as ammunition by congressional critics of immigration reform. But
after momentum gathered around plans for a law enforcement buildup on the
border, several well-known analysts in Mexico pressed their government to say
something about U.S. immigration reform, arguing that at some point, Mexico had
to stand up for the interests of its citizens at home and abroad. "This is a
contradiction," historian Lorenzo Meyer said in a Monday morning radio show about
plans to build up border defenses. " The United States wants commerce with Mexico ,
they want [laws that allow U.S.] investment, but they don't want the unavoidable
part of this relationship between unequal countries: The [Mexican] workers. " "It is a
very unfriendly move," former foreign minister Jorge Castaeda said Tuesday on
MVS Noticias, one of Mexico's top radio shows. Castaeda described the U.S.
proposal as something that would happen along the borders of enemy countries
"like North Korea and South Korea" - another border where the U.S. stations
thousands of troops. So if the U.S. border buildup proceeds, what will Mexico do in
response? It is still unclear. But a couple of suggestions have been made.

A. Relations key to Latin American stability

Selee and Wilson 12 [Andrew, Vice President for Programs and Senior Advisor to the Mexico
Institute at the Wilson Center, Christopher, associate with the Mexico Institute, A New Agenda with Mexico, Wilson
Center, November 2012, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/a_new_agenda_with_mexico.pdf]

As Mexicos security crisis begins to recede, the two 3 A New Agenda with
Mexico countries will also have to do far more to strengthen the
governments of Central America, which now face a rising tide of violence as
organized crime groups move southward. Mexico is also a U.S. ally in
deterring terrorist threats and promoting robust democracy in the
Western Hemisphere, and there will be numerous opportunities to
strengthen the already active collaboration as growing economic
opportunities reshape the regions political and social landscape.

B. Instability causes global war

Rochlin 94 [James Francis, Professor of Political Science at Okanagan
University College. Discovering the Americas: the evolution of Canadian
foreign policy towards Latin America, p. 130-131, 1994]
While there were economic motivations for Canadian policy in Central America, security considerations were
perhaps more important. Canada possessed an interest in promoting stability in the face of a potential decline of
U.S. hegemony in the Americas. Perceptions of declining U.S. influence in the region which had some credibility in
1979-1984 due to the wildly inequitable divisions of wealth in some U.S. client states in Latin America, in addition to
political repression, under-development, mounting external debt, anti-American sentiment produced by decades of
subjugation to U.S. strategic and economic interests, and so on were linked to the prospect of explosive events

the Central American imbroglio was viewed as a

fuse which could ignite a cataclysmic process throughout the region.
Analysts at the time worried that in a worst-case scenario, instability created by a
regional war, beginning in Central America and spreading elsewhere in
Latin America, might preoccupy Washington to the extent that the United
States would be unable to perform adequately its important hegemonic
role in the international arena a concern expressed by the director of research for Canadas
Standing Committee Report on Central America. It was feared that such a predicament could
generate increased global instability and perhaps even a hegemonic war.
occurring in the hemisphere. Hence,

This is one of the motivations which led Canada to become involved in efforts at regional conflict resolution, such as
Contadora, as will be discussed in the next chapter.

2AC AT: Terrorism DA

Terrorism acts as a mask to validate border surveillance
despite border surveillance failing to find crime
Mark Karlin, Mark Karlin is the editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout.  He served as
editor and publisher of BuzzFlash for ten years before joining Truthout in
2010.  BuzzFlash has won four Project Censored Awards. Karlin writes a
commentary five days a week for BuzzFlash, as well as articles (ranging from the
failed "war on drugs" to reviews relating to political art) for Truthout., 3-10-2013,
"Fear, Corporate Profiteering, and Government Expansion of the Security
Surveillance State on the US Borderland," Truthout, http://www.truthout.org/news/item/14993-fear-corporate-profiteering-and-government-expansion-ofthe-security-surveillance-state-on-the-us-borderland
Tom Barry, who recently wrote on the strategic dysfunction of the Border Patrol for
Truthout, laments - in a follow-up email - about the waste of dollars and resources on an
agency lacking a vital mission: On an institutional and personal level, the language
of "border security" functions simultaneously as a mask and crutch. The military
jargon of threats, forward-operating bases, operational control, etc. hides the fact
that this agency's operations have little or nothing to do with security. Rather, it is
more about sitting bored, shift after shift, in green-and-white trucks looking for
immigrants and weed. Perhaps, just perhaps, this glorified sense of mission - this
security mask - would be okay if it existed primarily to keep up morale (lowest among
federal bureaucracies) and to keep these gals and guys awake in their trucks. But as seen in the strategy
statements of all these homeland security agencies , especially CBP along with USBP and Office
of Air and Marine, the mask is much more than an internal morale booster; it functions to
justify ever higher budgets, increased presence in border communities, and
enormously expensive high-tech solutions. On March 1, Tom Diaz, an expert on the dangerous
business model of the gun industry asked in a Washington Post column, "Guns kill more people. So why does

There have been no credible reports of hordes of terrorists

walking across the border from Mexico. Immigration, even when it was at its
highest, had little impact on crime or violence in the US Borderland. The so-called
War on Drugs in Mexico and the Americas is an abject failure , with the US consumer
demand for illicit drugs remaining fully supplied and unabated. More than three
times the number of Americans are killed each year with guns than the number of
lives that were lost in the 9/11 terrorist attacks . Why can the federal government do so little about
terrorism get all the attention?"

the domestic daily death toll made possible by the gun industry, but build up a massively funded Borderland
security-surveillance industry? Indeed, Eagle Eye Expositions (which is also offering a similar Canadian border
conference later this year - and even a "Global Summit of Borders" in May) has found itself a matchmaker for forces
bent on turning America's southern border into a zone of fear. All signs are that, whatever temporary budget battles
in DC, the Borderland security industry will keep growing like a hedge fund manager's Cayman Islands bank
account. And Eagle Eye Expositions will draw a hefty profit from serving as the go-to (but not the only) convention
for players in this growth business dependent upon the largesse of the government and its affiliated agencies.

Terrorists can still get through Canada- even with Mexico

border surveillance
Cloherty 11

(Jack Cloherty, ABC Justice Dept.,Homeland Security producer, Pierre Thomas, Senior Justice
Correspondent for ABC News, 2/1/11, Congress: Border With Canada the Weak Link In Terror Security, ABC News,
http://abcnews.go.com/US/northern-border-weak-link-terror-security/story?id=12812214)

A congressional study out today says only 32 of the 4,000 miles of border with
Canada are fully secured by the U.S. Border Patrol, providing a potential pathway for
terrorists to enter this country. The General Accounting Office study was released this morning by
Senators Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Susan Collins, R-Maine. "The northern border provides easy
passage for extremists, terrorists and criminals who clearly mean to harm America,"
Lieberman said. He added while most of the nation's concern has been focused on
threats from our border with Mexico, he believes lax security on the northern border
is potentially more dangerous. "To me this report is absolutely alarming. The risk of
terrorist activity across the northern border is actually higher than the terror threat
on our southern border." Lieberman said he based that judgment on several factors: there are
more identified Islamic extremist groups in Canada than in Mexico; the northern border
has only "a fraction of the security" that is in force on the southern border; and the northern border is dotted with
large population centers, which makes it harder to detect illegal activity.