Getting tough on immigration apparently means refusing to provide funds for programs that have already been approved.
When the immigration issue was at the boiling point in the spring, the US Senate voted to erect a mere 370 miles of security fencing along the US-Mexican border. However, last week many of the same senators voted against providing funds to build it.
"We do a lot of talking. We do a lot of legislating," said Senator Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican whose amendment to fund the fence was killed on a 71-29 vote. "The things we do often sound very good, but we never quite get there," he told the Washington Times.
Sessions submitted his amendment to the Homeland Security Appropriations bill that would have authorized $1.8 billion to build the security fence as promised by the lawmakers and the Bush Administration. Two months ago members of the Senate voted 83-16 to build the fence along high-traffic areas of the border with Mexico. In the same vote on May 17, the Senate also directed 500 miles of vehicle barriers to be built along the border, as well.
But the May vote only authorized the fencing and vehicle barriers, and while the senators are on record as voting for border fencing and barriers, without the appropriations they've voted not to build the fence they've authorized.
"If we never appropriate the money needed to construct these miles of fencing and vehicle barriers, those miles of fencing and vehicle barriers will never actually be constructed," Mr. Sessions said on the floor of the Senate just prior to the vote, which was aired on C-SPAN, but not by any of the broadcast or cable news shows.
Democrats were joined by 28 Republicans in opposing the Sessions amendment to the Homeland Security Appropriations Act. Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Thomas R. Carper of Delaware were the only two Democrats who voted for funding the fence.
The senators — including most of the Republican leadership — voted in May to build the fence but last week opposed funding it.
The appropriations bill, which allocates over $30 billion to the Homeland Security Department — which includes $2.2 billion for border security and control but no fencing –passed on a 100-0 vote.
Republican Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who in the past has fought to increase border security and enforcement of federal immigration laws, opposed Senator Session's amendment.
"We should build these walls; there's no question about it. But the real issue here is the offset that's being used, and the offset creates a Hobson's choice for almost everyone here," Greg told the Washington Post.
Mr. Session's amendment would have required across-the-board cuts to the rest of the Homeland Security appropriations bill, Mr. Gregg said, which would mean cutting 750 new border-patrol agents and 1,200 new detention beds for illegal aliens that he included in the bill.
"Once again we see our government officials trying to provide security-on-the-cheap. Americans should be outraged," said a Border Patrol agent, who wishes to remain anonymous.
"Did anyone really believe these guys [senators] want to secure the border?" he said.
Another Border Patrol agent was less diplomatic: "Our leaders are not serious about border security. A few hundred more agents is a far cry from what they promised. It's a con-job on the American people."
Why not say what amnesty for illegal immigrants is? Pure and unadulterated slavery! Liberal democrats and big-business republicans joining together to cheapen labor costs and treat poor people inhumanely. I want to see Bush and company mandate minimum wage for “guest workers” with all the attendant protections and rights. Pigs will sooner fly. Liberals care only that the misery quotient remain high, so they can race and class bait themselves to power. If we don’t respect law in this country nothing else matters. Fine employers 10k for every illegal and watch the problem solve itself. I don’t blame the addict. I blame the pusher. Let’s lynch the pimp, but care for the prostitute.
I guess all the heated debate that went on a couple of months ago was all showboating on the part of the powers that be.
We border-area residents, I think, sense something in the not-to-distant future that our countrymen further inland and our representatives do not. It’s not something that never really gets talked about much because popular opinion is that only a few crackpots feel this way, but there is a palpable feeling here that if the government cannot or will not do something about foreign nationals bypassing our security and entering our country illegally, the people themselves will.
And this feeling is growing rapidly in both subscription and intensity.
Right now, the Minuteman-type groups simply observe illegal activity and report it. But I wouldn’t be a bit — not one teensy bit — surprised to hear, a year or two from now if nothing is done, stories of large numbers of citizens openly manning the border an shooting illegal entrants on the moment they set foot on U.S. soil…taking up arms in literal defense of their country against a foreign invasion.
Sad and frightening, yeah, but coming nonetheless.
In a recent speech by GWB, he states:
“I’m strongly for a comprehensive immigration policy, one that enforces the border. And we’re doing that by expanding agents and putting new technologies on our border. But part of a comprehensive immigration plan is to make sure we have interior enforcement, that we uphold our laws, and say to employers, it’s against the law for you to hire somebody here illegally; we intend to fine you when we catch you doing it. But we’ve got to get the employers the tools to make sure that the people who are here are here legally.”
It seems that several states have also become tired of this rhetoric. Some examples from USA Today are:
• A Colorado law enacted in June prohibits awarding state contracts to businesses that knowingly employ illegal immigrants.
• A Louisiana law approved in June subjects businesses that have state contracts and more than 10 employees to fines if they don’t fire workers known to be undocumented.
• A Georgia bill enacted in April has a phased-in requirement that public employers and government contractors and subcontractors verify information on newly hired workers through a federal program.
There are a total of 30 states that have passed recent illegal immigration laws. Now that the cat is out of the bag and the jury is in on funding (or the denying of) the border fence, it becomes apparent that the open border elites such as Sen. McCain, GW Bush, a large percentage of the GOP and most democrat Senators cannot be trusted on this issue. We were told by these elites that border security would come first with a “comprehensive package” being the ultimate goal. Do they think that if they tell this same lie over and over that the public will swallow it? It appears that most Americans that want something done about the lack of border security have become quite weary of the rhetoric. Time to do something about it in November.
“‘I want to see Bush and company mandate minimum wage for “guest workers”’
Minimum wage laws are a travesty agains the people foisted off on us by feel good liberals. This is the government falsely inflating the price of labor which can only cause the price of goods and services to rise disproportionatly thereby benefiting only the rich very few others. do the math and see who benefits.
As to the rest of the comments, yes, we are being lied to by the very people sworn to protect us. Their lies and inaction will lead to bloodshed, and when it does you can bet the very same liers will turn against the defenders like a pack of rabid dogs.
Sir, I’m familiar with the argument. In the utopian “even-playing” field it all works wonderfully. Simple supply and demand would make produce a fraction of what it is we pay. Goverment subsidies keep prices artifificially high. Goverment pays farmers to destroy crops. An American business can take his factory, employing say, 2000, at competitive wages, to some third-world country run by some tin-horn dictator. If during the next coup in that country some President-for-Life character decides to confiscate the factory, guess who picks up the bill? We do! It’s all written off! We need to see the unions as a necessary evil against the “New World Order” (Elder Bush) types. Otherwise, I’m with you.
Sir, I’m familiar with the argument. In the utopian “even-playing” field it all works wonderfully. Simple supply and demand would make produce a fraction of what it is we pay. Goverment subsidies keep prices artificially high. Goverment pays farmers to destroy crops. An American businessmen can take their factories, employing say, 2000, at competitive wages, to some third-world country run by some tin-horn dictator. If during the next coup in that country some President-for-Life character decides to confiscate the factory, guess who picks up the bill? We do! It’s all written off! We need to see the unions as a necessary evil against the “New World Order” (Elder Bush) types. Otherwise, I’m with you.