Citing the need to stem immigrant masses from crossing U.S. borders, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) has authored the deceptively named National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act (H.R. 1505), which has now passed the GOP-controlled House of Representatives. The act would affect areas near both southern and northern borders (we must be vigilant of those Canadians, eh?), and allow immigration officials to effectively ignore environmental legislation.

In Bishop’s mind, there are floods of immigrants charging over both borders, and environmental safeguards prevent officials from stopping the influx. Never mind that net immigration between the U.S. and Mexico has dropped to virtually zero, or that Border Patrol has expressed no need for increased powers to run roughshod over laws already on the books, or that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano characterizes the bill as “bad policy” and “unnecessary” — something must be done!

If the bill is signed into law, Border Patrol can waive 16 laws on federal lands within 100 miles of both the northern and southern borders, including the Safe Drinking Water Act and Endangered Species Act. The area of “protection” reaches from Joshua Tree to Big Bend in the south and from Glacier National Park to beyond Olympic National Park in the north. So, if you want to canoe along Boundary Waters Wilderness, for instance, or hike in Joshua Tree, with H.R. 1505 as law, you’d better check with Border Patrol first. Sure, that’s going to help them do their job.

“I want this resolved so border security has the precedence down there,” the prescient Rep. Bishop says. “If it means you lose a couple of acres of wilderness, I don’t think God will blame us at the judgment bar for doing that.”

So what is this all about? It isn’t about removing impediments to enforcing immigration law — that’s a red herring. It’s about Republicans who can’t stand any law protecting our national heritage and how they will do anything to exploit the environment for their own fear-laden, short-sighted purposes. It has little to do with protecting and preserving what is best about America.

Main photo credit: Border patrol car, Hillebrand Steve/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service