Is rural America harmed by security strategy?

Take, for example, the impact of immigration policy changes on the supply of physicians in rural America, argues Dr. Karen Johnson-Webb, author of “A ‘One Size Fits All’ Policy? A Geographical Perspective on Rural Homeland Security,” a study that examines what she calls “vitally and strategically important” areas that have been neglected in the homeland security discussion.

Previously, foreign graduates of American medical schools could start practicing while awaiting completion of paperwork for a student visa waiver. The waiver allows them to practice in a medically underserved rural area rather than return to their home country for two years, as required by their visas.

Now, foreign doctors need to have the waiver in hand before they can practice, a change that has “further crippled an already underserved rural health care system,” says Johnson-Webb, an assistant professor in the geography department and the Center for Policy Analysis and Public Service at BGSU.

Some rural areas found it hard enough to attract doctors before prospective candidates were given “more hoops to jump through,” she says. Noting that the effects ripple through quality of life in the affected areas, she plans a survey of the 50 states to gauge the change’s impact on the local level. “

This is critical to rural preparedness for terrorism,” adds Johnson-Webb, who presented her preliminary findings last year at a meeting of the Association of American Geographers in New Orleans and is submitting her study to a geography journal for possible publication.

The concentration of agriculture and food producing activities alone is enough to warrant consideration of rural areas as strategically important, writes Johnson-Webb. Crucial infrastructure also located in rural areas—including dams, nuclear power plants, and portions of the nation’s electrical grid and interstate highway systems—could be prime terrorist targets as well, she says.

Yet, the federal government has reduced budgetary allocations for agriculture and rural development to devote more funds to homeland security, with most of that money going to urban areas. In addition to leaving rural areas with less for programs that help keep them viable, the reductions demonstrate rural America’s disadvantage in competitiveness for homeland security funding, Johnson-Webb points out.

President Bush didn’t offer any additional funding in his recent State of the Union speech—an omission that disappointed the BGSU researcher.

Another “serious and glaring issue,” she says, is the unknown ownership of about 13,000 dams among the roughly 77,000 listed in the 1999 National Inventory of Dams. Also unknown, in the case of more than 1,200 dams, was the hazard level to infrastructure and population downstream should a breach occur. For more than 550 dams, neither the owner nor the hazard level was identified. “

These deficiencies must be corrected,” according to the geographer. “A complete inventory of dams is essential to the development of effective national security planning.”

Johnson-Webb began wondering how vulnerabilities differed in urban and rural areas after attending Gov. Bob Taft’s Ohio Homeland Security Summit in 2002. “

It’s a multifaceted issue, so it doesn’t hurt to be looking at it from different angles,” she maintains. “We need to be considering as many scenarios as possible.”

The BGSU faculty member points out that if a catastrophic terrorist attack occurs in an urban area, an exodus to rural areas is possible, further straining emergency response and health care capabilities in those areas. While applauding the “tenacity and commitment” of both urban and rural emergency responders, “a lot of them would be in over their heads.” “

The first problem is funding, especially in rural areas, and if that means we have to take the pinch somewhere else, that’s what it means,” says Johnson-Webb, who also advocates increased policy emphasis on Canadian border security, including coordination with Indian tribes to provide more patrols of tribal lands on the border.

Homeland security is “not going to get done the way it needs to get done without the funding,” she continues. “The money is there for whatever the president or powers that be want it to be there.”

(Posted January 27, 2004 )