O K, the “First 100 Hours” theatrics are past. There is no time to waste. Voters who believed the Democrats were serious about regaining control of the nation’s borders and stopping the flood of illegal immigrants want to see action. Unfortunately, now that they’re in control of Congress, Democrats so far are showing little stomach for the job.
Last year, a bipartisan majority in Congress approved legislation to build a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border. President Bush reluctantly signed that bill into law after House Republicans refused to support his guest worker proposal. But a little-known loophole allows Congress to withhold funding until everybody in Washington agrees on exactly how to build the fence. Surprise! They don’t.
It looks like the new Congress has no intention of stopping illegal immigration. The fence was the first real progress in years, but will there be more during the next two years? “So far, the only thing that appears to have changed is the excuses for why illegal immigration and our open borders cannot be fixed,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
The Department of Homeland Security has a contract with Boeing for an expensive surveillance system that creates a “virtual fence” to protect the 18 points of entry identified as attractive to drug cartels and criminal gangs by a congressional committee.
But a nonphysical barrier requires stepped-up enforcement to be effective, and that’s not happening, either. The Bush administration’s scandal of corruption and inefficiency in the immigration bureaucracy continues unaddressed.
The first priority of the federal government is defense of our borders. That is the fundamental immigration issue.
In an age of terrorism, wemust know who enters America and what are their intentions. If members of the new Congress want to be taken seriously on this issue, they need to get moving to protect the borders.
