The House yesterday easily approved building 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to get major border-security legislation on President Bush's desk before November's elections.
"The time to address the border-security emergency is now, before Congress leaves for the November election," said House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, applauding the Republican-backed measure and introducing a slate of new border-security measures that he hopes to pass this month.
Yesterday's border-fence bill was approved on a 283-138 vote. The vast majority of House Republicans were joined by 64 Democrats to support the measure. Six Republicans voted against it. ...
The measure still has lots of detractors, including House Dems and Senate Republicans:
Democrats dismissed the vote as "another political gimmick" by House Republicans who passed a tough border-security bill last year but have since been unable to persuade the Republican Senate to take it up. The Senate remains intent on its own bill that tightens border security but at the same time grants citizenship rights to some 10 million illegal aliens and creates a guest-worker program that will usher hundreds of thousands more foreign laborers into the U.S.
Yesterday, House Democrats called the 700-mile fence a new "Berlin wall" and expressed concern that it would drive illegal crossers deep into the dangerous desert in search of an unimpeded crossing.
For the history-impaired, the Berlin wall was built to keep people in. The southern border wall will be built to keep people out. Other than the fact that they are both walls, there's not much similarity.
And then there's this from a lightweight Hispanic Orange County Congresswoman:
Rep. Loretta Sanchez, California Democrat, added, "It does nothing to secure our northern border."Well, geographically she's correct. Probably the first thing she's been right on since she stole an election from B-1 Bob Dornan.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment