Ruining America: How Free Trade and Open Borders Are Transforming the Environment

As the mass immigration policies of U.S. elites change the country from a uniquely American society into a multicultural one, their free trade deals and open door globalism are also changing America's natural environment. Thanks to open borders and increasing trade with low-wage Third World countries, foreign species of fish, insects, and other invaders are hitch-hiking into the U.S., threatening changes to the landscape and native ecosystems just as permanent as the demographic ones now underway.

Unbeknownst to most Americans, a wide variety of these unwanted species have already insinuated themselves in communities, waterways, and properties across the country.

The bedbug infestation of New York City where a majority of the population is foreign-born is probably the most well-publicized example of the changes underway. That infestation, now spreading to the rest of the U.S., is just as much a consequence of the reckless political decisions made by America's ideologically-driven political elites as the invasion of other foreign species plaguing the U.S.

The residents of Houston, Texas, are grappling with an invasion of Rasberry ants, named after a pest control expert who first discovered them on U.S. soil. Believed to originate in the Caribbean, the ants appear to resist conventional insecticides, bite humans and pets, eat the hatchlings of an endangered grouse, eat ladybugs, and accumulate by the tens of thousands, blanketing lawns and trees, and destroying electrical and computer equipment. They have already caused significant damage to critical electrical systems, threatening harm to schools, hosptials, traffic control systems, and airports.

The Formasan termite and so-called stink bug are two other foreign insects that arrived in recent years. Native to China, the termite is the most aggressive termite known, living in large underground colonies of several million mostly in the Southern U.S., capable of eating wood at a rapid rate. The stink bug, so called because it emits a foul odor when squashed, is also from Asia and has no known natural predators in the U.S. Arriving in the late 1990s, it destroys fruit crops.

"In certain areas of Eastern Pennsylvania, some of the growers there have lost 50 percent of their crops," said Dr. Lou Magnarelli, director of the Connecticut Agriculture Experiment Station.

In the Great Lakes, the round goby, a 6-inch long fish that arrived from the Black Sea just a few years ago, threatens to wipe out the smallmouth bass, one of the most popular sport fish in Lake Erie.

The Great Lakes also face a much more serious threat from Asian Carp. In December 2009, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service discovered an Asian Carp in an Illinois canal that leads to lake Michigan, the largest fresh water lake in the world. Scientist worry that the Asian Carp, which can eat as much as 40 percent of its weight every day, will severely damage the ecosystem of the lakes, eating the food on which sport fish depend, killing the $7 billion a year sport fishing industry and the $10 billion boating industry. Asian Carp can grow large and aggressive, as much as 40 lbs, and often jump out of the water, hitting boaters.

Another very serious threat to the U.S. landscape comes from the Asian long-horned beetle, whose larvae eat and kill hardwood trees, including maple, chestnut, and poplar. Unless controlled, they could very will kill of millions of acres of American forestland.

"Entire forests are being wiped out, and it is costing taxpayers millions as the government tries to eradicate invaders that threaten industries dependent on trees and plants," said Betsy Von Holle, a biologist at the University of Central Florida. "We're losing a variet;y of native species as a result of importing these pests."