Shock: Congress Conspires To Gut Border Fence

Who could have seen this one coming?

Republican presidential hopeful Duncan Hunter is blasting a Democrat-sponsored bill that would eliminate the requirement passed by Congress to build a double-layered fence covering 854 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.

"By eliminating the double fence requirement, the Democratic Congress is going to make it easier for drug and human smugglers to cross our Southern land border," said Hunter. "This goes against the interests of any family that has been touched by illegal drugs or any American who has seen their job taken by an illegal alien."

As WND reported last week, an amendment submitted by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and co-sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, for the Department of Homeland Security 2008 budget was aimed at gutting the already-approved Secure Fence Act, which was adopted with the promise hundreds of miles of physical fencing would help secure the U.S. border with Mexico.

The Hutchison amendment allows the secretary of homeland security to use discretion in deciding whether a fence was the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control along the border with Mexico.

DHS is on record as preferring in many instances the construction of "pedestrian fences" or "virtual fences" instead of double-layered barriers as required in the 2006 law.

...

"The American people reasonably expect that a double-layer fence will be built, but Congress has always had other plans," [the president of Grassfire.org] argued. "This amendment should be stripped from the bill."

On the other hand, Congress has been prudent enough to appropriate 10 million dollars to pay for the lawyers of illegal immigrants fighting their deportation orders. So, they haven't completely forgotten about the issue.

Meanwhile... Jim Gilchrist has some buyer's remorse over his endorsement of Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee talks tough with the Krikorian plan but then takes it all back with his enthusiasm for the Pence "touchback" plan often floated during the immigration fight, which immediately grants amnesty so long as an illegal immigrant just returns to his home country for a few days and then comes back to sign up as a new US citizen. All through the immigration debate the Amnestias would push this idea as somehow making their amnesty plan a non-amnesty.

Obviously it's still amnesty. It's just amnesty with a minor bureaucratic headache thrown in which accomplishes nothing except for annoying the newly amnestied US citizen.

The demand for a home-country "touchback" would be soon repealed anyway, with the Amnestias arguing it's an empty gesture that accomplishes nothing at all. And on that score, of course, they're right.

So why bother with the fiction in the first place?

And Romney Attended A Planned Parenthood Fundraiser In 1994: So there you go.

I remember at the beginning of this race when I was pretty satisfied with the candidates. I still like them, but each of them seems to have a virtually disqualifying black mark on his record somewhere.

Two new polls show Giuliani rapidly losing ground to Huckabee in Florida, by the way.

So he appears done.

posted by Ace at 01:23 PM

| Access Comments