The Liberal elites in Washington have repeatedly shown their disdain for the wishes of the American people. The only explanation is that they are all totally corrupt. Next year, 2008 promises to see a number of incumbents seeking new employment, and this is just the beginning. When our leaders can’t agree that English is the official language of the USA you can tell they just do not live on the same plane of existence that the common working man does.
It is time to close the door on them. Perhaps they’d all find Mexico more to their liking.
Congressional Democrats, and some Republicans, gut the Secure Fence Act in the omnibus spending bill against the wishes of the American people. In a bill with 9,000 earmarks, border security takes a back seat.
The Secure Fence Act of 2006 required the construction of 700 miles of border fence, modeled on the success of the border barriers in the San Diego sector of the U.S. border. The operative word is “secure.”
That legislation specifically called for “two layers of reinforced fencing” and listed five specific sections of the border where it should be built. The omnibus spending bill removes the requirement for two tiers and the specific list of locations.
The two-tier fence in San Diego runs 14 miles along the border with Tijuana, Mexico. The first layer is a high steel fence, with an inner high anti-climb fence with a no-man’s land in between.
It has been amazingly effective. According to a 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, illegal alien apprehensions in the San Diego sector dropped from 202,000 in 1992 to 9,000 in 2004.
As local congressman and presidential candidate Duncan Hunter notes, “The success of the San Diego Border Fence demonstrates the overall effectiveness of the double-layered approach and the importance of extending this infrastructure across the southern land border.”
It is that very success, we suspect, that frightens the open-border crowd and their representatives in Congress. How else to explain that, as the citizen watchdog group Grassfire (grassfire.org) notes, just five miles of fence that meets specifications has been built in the first year after the Secure Fence Act was passed.
The spending bill was written by Democrats and passed 253-154 with mostly their votes. Democrats say they weren’t deliberately dropping the two-tiered fence or the locations specified. They say they were merely adopting language that passed the Senate several times this year.
Indeed, in the Senate version is a curious amendment by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, that was added on a voice vote. Her amendment reads:
“Nothing in this paragraph shall require the secretary of Homeland Security to install fencing, physical barriers, roads lighting, cameras and sensors in a particular location along an international border of the United States, if the secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control over the international border at such location.”
Hutchinson’s office says the amendment merely gives DHS flexibility. What it provides, however, is an excuse to do nothing at all and a license for open-border politicians to pressure DHS.
DHS is on record as preferring in many instances “pedestrian fences” or “virtual fences” that are essentially a look-but-can’t-touch version of border security.
“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.”
Congress has also made it easier for terrorists to sneak their operatives into the U.S.
This is in a nation that won two world wars and put men on the moon. The border fence would have been farther along if we’d just given the Minutemen a federal grant in the form of a gift certificate to Home Depot. (NYSE:HD)
So the next time you hear candidates for any office say they support border security, give them a post-hole digger and point them toward Mexico.
