By Cal Thomas
Syndicated columnist/FOX News Political Contributor

The Supreme Court’s decision to allow the Bush Administration to proceed with a 670-mile fence along our Southwestern border is a welcome step that should have been taken years ago. The environmentalists and other left-wingers who opposed the fence were more concerned about interrupting the mating habits of two types of wildcats rather than protecting the nature and character (not to mention laws) of their own country.

This debate has never been about wildcats, or the environment. It has been about importing votes. Liberal Democrats have not been able to win consistently with native-born Americans and legal immigrants and so are importing votes and creating a new class of people dependent on them.

Time magazine has a cover story this week titled “The Great Wall of America: A billion-dollar barrier is going up between the U.S. and Mexico. It’s reducing illegal immigration — but does America really need to wall itself off?”

The fence isn’t about walling us off. It is about protecting us against an invasion by hordes of people who burden our education and health system, commit crimes and have difficulty assimilating. They also drive down wages, making it difficult for law-abiding, legal citizens to compete.

No nation can survive if it is unable, or unwilling, to control its borders. We are losing what has made us the greatest nation on earth. A border fence (and it needs to extend across the entire border) will allow us to deal with those already here illegally, to possibly give them citizenship under certain conditions and then to fully assimilate them into our culture, history and language. To do otherwise is to further divide and hyphenate us instead of making us one.