Spends $10B — and
deports no illegals…
(Daily Caller) – The new border bills drafted
by Republican leaders require the actual removal of at least 66 miles of weak
border fencing between laborers in Mexico and employers in the United States.
The border bills also only require for the
construction of 27 miles of effective double-layer fencing along the 2,000-mile
border.
“It is a remarkable that the direction of our
progress is going backwards, from a goal of building 700 miles of double-layer
border fencing [in 2006] to only 27 miles [in 2015],” said a Hill staffer who
opposes the leaders’ bills.
“Where
the double-layer fence has been put in, it has worked spectacularly. The public
is with us 80, 90 percent on this issue,” he added.
Extra fencing would be a waste of money,
according to Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on
Homeland Security.
“The bill matches resources to needs, putting
27 more miles of fencing where fencing is needed, and technology where
technology is needed,” said the statement.
“In our conversations with outside groups,
experts and stakeholders, we learned that it would be an inefficient use of
taxpayer money to complete the fence. … We are using that money to utilize
other technology to create a secure border,” said the statement.
A House staffer said the McCaul’s bill doesn’t
require a major fence because of advocacy by Heritage and Grover Norquist’s
Americans for Tax Reform.
Dan Holler, communications director for
Heritage Action for America, told The Daily Caller that Heritage did not
recommend against fencing.
ATR has joined with wealthy
advocates — such as former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg — to
call for increased use of foreign workers and residency for illegal immigrants.
Senate committee staffers declined to offer
any reassurances that Senators would modify the bill to fund more fencing and
to block Obama’s catch-and-release policy, prior to a Senate vote in a few
weeks.
“We’re going to be looking at everything,”
said a committee staffer. “We can’t give any detail beyond that.”
The Senate bill is co-sponsored by Arizona
Sen. Jeff Flake, who co-sponsored the Senate’s 2013 immigration bill.
“We introduced the McCaul [House] bill [in the
Senate] as is and plan to update and improve it as we study the issue through
[House] briefings and hearings,” said the staffer, who works for the Senate’s
homeland security committee. The committee is chaired by Wisconsin Sen. Ron
Johnson.
The public strongly supports a border
fence. An April 2013 poll by Rasmussen shows “that 57% of Likely
U.S. Voters think the United States should continue building a border fence,
while 29% disagree.” Support for the fence is much higher among the GOP-leaning
voters that provided the votes for the GOP victory in November.
A 2006 law required the construction of 700
miles of double-layer fencing along the 2,000 mile border. However,
Congress quietly modified the bill in 2008 to allow the construction of simple,
ineffective fences in place of the required double-layer fencing.
Officials claim that just over 600 miles of
the border now have obstructions, including barriers. But those barriers
include lines of bollards to stop vehicles, plus single-layer “landing mat fencing”
and only 36.5 miles of double-layer fencing.
The leaders’ bills call for the replacement of
anti-pedestrian mat fences by anti-vehicle bollards.
The bollards will allow migrants to be driven
up to the border, and then walked over to a pick-up vehicle on the U.S. side.
“Not later than 18 months after the date of
the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall replace, at
a minimum, each of the following: (A) Thirty-one miles of landing mat fencing
with bollard style fencing in the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector. (B) Five
miles of landing mat fencing with bollard style fencing in the Border Patrol’s
El Centro sector. (C) Three miles of landing mat fencing with bollard style
fencing in the Border Patrol’s Yuma sector. (D) Twenty-five miles of landing
mat fencing with bollard style fencing in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector.
(E) Two miles of landing mat fencing with bollard style fencing in the Border
Patrol’s El Paso sector,” says a section on page 12 of the House bill, HR
399.
Despite the bill’s requirement to reduce
fencing, McCaul’s statement declared that “this bill is the toughest border
security bill ever before Congress.”
But the leaders’ border security bill also
doesn’t even try to block Obama’s catch-and-release policies, said the Hill
staffer who opposes the leaders’ bill. Even if additional spending and
border guards catch more migrants, Obama’s deputies will likely release them
and give them work permits unless the laws are changed, he said.
GOP legislators who support the leaders’ bill
are “unwilling participants in a con job” against their own voters, he said.
But the GOP leadership has fast-tracked the
border bill, which will be debated and perhaps amended during a House hearing
during the afternoon of Jan. 21.
In 2010, President Barack Obama claimed the
partially built fence is “now basically complete.” Since then, he has
allowed more than 150,000 lower-skilled Central Americans migrants
who cross unfenced parts of the border to stay, apply for asylum, and get
government benefits and work permits.
In November, Obama also promised to halt
the repatriation of the 12 million illegals living in the United States,
and has promised to give at least four million work permits to migrants with
U.S.-born children.
In December, GOP leaders agreed to fund
Obama’s de facto amnesty, despite overwhelming opposition from the GOP’s
base and from swing voters.
Many GOP leaders say the nation’s employers
should be allowed to hire hundreds of thousands of foreign workers for the
food-sector, for blue-collar jobs and for professional work in
hospitals, universities and many other non-technology jobs,
plus technology jobs.
Texas legislators have strongly pushed for
easy hiring of foreign migrants. For example, the chairman of the critical House
rules committee, Texas Rep. Pete Sessions predicted the GOP would ensure a
complete amnesty for the low-wage illegals now working in the United
States.
Numerous polls show that Americans
are overwhelmingly opposed to the displacement of American workers by
migrant workers. For example, a September 2014 poll by Paragon
Insights showed that large slices of the Democratic coalition would be “much
more likely” to vote for a GOP candidate who says that “the first goal of
immigration policy needs to be getting unemployed Americans back to work – not
importing more low-wage workers to replace them.”
Thirty-eight percent of African-Americans, 39
percent of Democratic women, 36 percent of Latinos and roughly 47 percent of
Midwesterners said they would be much more likely to support a GOP candidate
who favors the employment of Americans.
Source:http://www.teaparty.org/new-gop-border-security-bill-removes-border-fences-78781/
http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/21/new-gop-border-security-bill-removes-border-fences/
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