First, I will begin by addressing the key argument the opposition has made, then I will go on to outline my specific argument and link-chain
Owen_T's statement: The situation at the border is complex and very problematic for the U.S. We must be able to efficiently monitor and understand it if we are ever to create a comprehensive and effective plan to fix it.
Responses:
1. I will concede that the situation at the border is complex and problematic, however I would argue that this complexity adds more incentive to not expand border surveillance. The reason being is that border surveillance fundamentally perpetuates cycles of structural violence and the death of migrants. A meta study conducted by the University of Arizona (
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08865655.2019.1570861), found that the common strategy of implementing surveillance infrastructure is not to actually understand the crisis but rather to make it "so difficult and so costly to enter this country illegally that fewer individuals even try". This never solved anything, instead it just moved migration patterns from traditional urban crossing areas to rural deserts in places such as southern Arizona for less visibility. This created what is known as the "funnel effect". The funnel effect has perpetuated structural violence against migrants and led to a 20-fold increase in the death and disappearance of migrants.
2. Surveillance technology empirically fails and no matter what tech is used in expansion, further efforts will, once again, continue to increase migrant deaths. The U.S. has spent billions of dollars into surveillance towers, land interdiction, and tunnel detection programs. However, there is no true metric showing actual success. In fact, past surveillance towers have quite literally detected grazing cattle as humans, wasting governmental resources
3. In a world where surveillance increases, it will only push migrants to go through "third-party entities" to enter the border. This puts migrants at a huge risk of increased trafficking and exploitative situations.
Ultimately, I would argue that the opposition has a severe lack of warranting.
My argument:
Framing: There are two layers of analysis on how this debate should be framed. The first layer is consequentialism. Consequentialist framework enhances the evaluation of material impacts. The second layer is structural violence (SV). SV framing is imperative because SV is something that goes under covered a lot of the time. It breaks down and highlights harms and impacts on oppressed groups and shows areas where social structures or aspects of a society harm people from accessing basic needs.
Sole Contention: Decrease of Remittances
Currently, democracy is backsliding across Latin America. There has been a huge democratic recession over the past 20 years where authoritarian regimes are using power vacuums to control the region. Examples of countries that have these regimes are Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
This increase of oppressive authoritarian regimes is a key reason to why immigrants from Latin America come to the United States for work. To contextualize this, south american individuals have the highest labor force participation rate and 71% of south americans (16+) were in the US civilian labor force.
Since there is such a large density of south american individuals working in the US, remittances from south american individuals back to Latin America are high (quantifiably, 145 billion dollars in remittance flows). These remittances are key to Latin America's economy as statistically, remittances give more money than the World Bank Group lends and more money than Latin America gains from US-Latin America integration or trade pacts.
Increased surveillance deters immigration and kills migrants (refer to the warranting from my response to your argument). This means remittances greatly decrease. Without these remittances families will suffer in Latin America as the World Bank (
blogs.worldbank.org/en/voices/remittances-are-critical-economic-stabilizer), proves that remittances are key for alleviating poverty, nutritional outcomes and allowing for households to build resilience. This fundamentally increases the vulnerability of Latin American countries, adding fuel to the fire and making them more susceptible to authoritarian pressures.
More specficially, the Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics found in an analysis from 2023, that remittances promote democracy for developing countries. They promote political liberalization and democratic progress due to economic development.
Ultimately, through the framing mechanism, the neg wins on magnitude and scope.
Apologies, I will be taking the neg stance, arguing that we should not expand surveillance infrastructure.
you forgot to state if you are pro or con
The United States Federal Government should not expand surveillance infrastructure at the Southern Border.