Thursday, May 16, 2019

Threat of Eminent Domain (Blog #8)

Henry Y's post about eminent domain in regards to the border wall was interesting. I had no idea that there were 350 filings for the federal government to seize land under "eminent domain".
I agree that states should have more control over state land and that citizens should have absolute control over ownership of their land.
The issue of lower-than-actual-value compensation for property is also a major issue and doesn't take into account money made off of the land. Eminent domain is often approached as buying parcels of land for the value that one would receive if they were to sell them. With so many rural areas in Texas where people are reliant on farming and livestock the seizure of their land, even with compensation, couldn't cover the whole value that they could have made from the land.
The other aspect of lower-than-actual-value compensation for the land is that the last time land was seized by the federal government for border construction, "Homeland Security cut unfair real estate deals, secretly waived legal safeguards for property owners and ultimately abused the government’s extraordinary power to take land from private citizens." This post references this article which explains the issues of the past that are causing citizens to be apprehensive about more border-wall construction. 
I think it is pretty safe to say that if President Trump is willing to declare a fake national emergency to push the building of the border-wall and is still struggling with it's funding, then there is a good chance that people will not be fairly compensated and safeguarded as the government seizes citizen's land

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