Frist Wins Big – America Wins Bigger
Bill Frist ramrodded the "fence only" immigration bill through a cloture vote and it carried by 71-28. The fence only bill will be passed tomorrow with no way for opponents to kill it. There will be additional fence on the Mexican border.
While our borders are still inexcusably porous, we’ve made a great deal of progress in the last two years. With the passage of Defense and Homeland Security appropriations bills, we will have added 3,736 new Border Patrol agents … 9,150 new detention beds … and 1,373 detention personnel. We’ve more than quadrupled spending on border and immigration enforcement … increasing funding from $4 billion prior to 9/11 to over $16 billion today. We’ve seen apprehensions at the border increase by 45%. We’ve ended catch-and-release.
And, just moments ago, the Senate invoked cloture on the Secure Fence Act of 2006 by a vote of 71-28. Tomorrow the Senate will pass this legislation and send it to the President’s desk for his signature.
By requiring the construction of at least 700 miles of two-layered reinforced fencing along our southwest border and by mandating the use of cameras, ground sensors, UAVs and other forms of hi-tech surveillance, this legislation will help us gain control over every inch of our borders. The Homeland Security appropriations bill authorizes $1.8 billion in funding … so construction will proceed as quickly as possible. As the fence is erected, more funding in future budgets will be required, but I’m confident that the 71 Senators who proved themselves serious about border security today will support continued funding.
Nicely done. We have both increased security on the border and a way to handle terrorist detainees in one day. A significant day.
Immigration Reform, Politics | Gaius September 28, 2006
By Kathy, September 28, 2006 @ 8:10 pm
America wins nothing. Building a fence on our border with Mexico is totally un-American, and racist to boot. Will we be building a fence on our border with Canada?
I never thought I would live to see the day when my beloved America would build its own Berlin wall. It’s utterly shameful; it’s disgraceful. America loses big.
And it won’t even work. People found ways to get over an electrified Berlin wall, or died trying. People will find ways to get over our fences, no matter how high we build them.
By Gaius, September 28, 2006 @ 8:24 pm
Kathy, The Berlin Wall was built to keep people in. Do you not see there is a difference? There is no racism involved, it is a right of any country to control its borders. The racist smokescreen is degrading to those who use it. You might want to really think rather than feel what you believe to be true. Here’s the kind of people we are letting cross the border illegally along with the decent ones – who choose not to wait their turns.
http://bluecrabboulevard.com/2006/09/20/another-reason-to-build-a-fence/
By syn, September 29, 2006 @ 4:18 am
My take on totally un-American activity is to encourage illegal immigration upon one race of people who will never be protected under American law. Illegal immigration will only create a permament underclass system forced to live in the shadows and designed to undermine legal labor laws. The most un-American aspect to open border illegal immigration is the harm this system brings to those who migrate legally.
I never thought I’d see the day when global corporatists join hands with anti-globalists in order to crush American labor laws, prohibit the opportunity for up-ward mobility, establish a permanent underclass (in today’s case it is those whose naive tongue is Spanish), and supports illegal behavior while promoting a massive slave trade industry.
Illegal immigration also enables those countries to force their citizens to flee from economic misery under illegal terms. Fascinating that Mexico has per capita more billionaires that Switzerland and greater abundance of natural recources than America yet it illegally exports its poor to its neighbor across the border.
America doesn’t do slavery.
By syn, September 29, 2006 @ 4:19 am
that’s native tongue not naive
By Santay, September 29, 2006 @ 4:27 am
Securing the borders should have been the first order of business on 9/12/01. Instead we’ve let tens of thousands of illegal aliens into this country that drain public resources. Its just pure luck that some terrorist with a knapsack full of anthrax hasn’t joined the daily throng crossing the border. Then again, maybe he has.
By Ross, September 29, 2006 @ 7:14 am
Kathy, reasonable people can disagree on the border issue, but the Berlin Wall analogies are flimsy.
By TC@LeatherPenguin, September 29, 2006 @ 7:39 am
Kathy?
Hi! You don’t know me, but I’ve heard your living room is really nifty; so nifty, in fact, that I want to sit on your couch and gorge myself on Cheetos while watching “Law and Order” reruns for the ninety-ninth time. Oh, and you gotta pay for the Cheetos, since I’m just a poor, hapless victim of BushCo’s war against people of my race (and federally recognized disability… which is personal and therefore none of your business, thank you very much… but locking up any booze on the premises could possibly be considered a disciminatory act).
So be a doll and unlock the front door, okay? I’ll bring a tractor trailer full of my friends and we can all sing “Kumbaya” in multi-lingual harmonies! Whee!
Yours,
El Loco Rojo
By NahnCee, September 29, 2006 @ 12:16 pm
Kathy, reasonable people can disagree on the border issue, but the Berlin Wall analogies are flimsy.
Gee, you don’t suppose that might be because people who make these sorts of statements are stupid, do you?
By Kathy, September 29, 2006 @ 6:30 pm
The Berlin Wall was built to keep people in. Do you not see there is a difference?
The purpose of the Berlin Wall was to keep East Germans from crossing over into West Germany, which over two million of them had done by the time the war was built. The purpose of a fence along the Mexican border is to keep Mexicans and other Latin Americans from crossing over into the United States. East Germans fled to West Germany because they wanted better lives for themselves. Mexicans and others in Central America come into the U.S. for similar reasons.
The difference is that Germany never had a tradition of welcoming the poor and oppressed from other nations. For the United States, that tradition is at the heart of our identity and self-image as a people. It’s what America IS.
Building a fence around our borders is a betrayal of everything this country has meant for millions of immigrants from all over the world. If Bill Frist and the Bush administration want to end that tradition, then when we build that fence, we should also tear down the Statue of Liberty, because the words, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” will be hollow and empty.
By Kathy, September 29, 2006 @ 6:31 pm
I should have typed, “… by the time the WALL was built, not WAR.”
By Gaius, September 29, 2006 @ 6:53 pm
When the flood of illegal immigrants continues to push down wages will you be happy? When it undermines and crushes the labor movement, will you be happy? When the health system collapses under the flood of unregulated immigrants overwhlems it, will you be happy? When the illegal immigrants jump ahead of the people who have patiently waited in line for years will you be happy? When the gangs and criminals and drug dealers who also come along with the people just looking for a better life start preying on you and yours, will you be happy?
All very idealistic, Kathy. But your ideals are a nice recipe for national suicide. When this torrent of people drags this country down to the level of the third world will you be happy then?
By Kathy, September 29, 2006 @ 8:48 pm
Gaius, did you read about the woman who owned a large pear orchard and lost most of the pears because the immigrants who usually picked the crop for her stopped coming? Most of them were undocumented and either couldn’t get into the country or were picked up and deported. And she could not find any Americans willing to do that kind of work — so she lost an entire season’s income.
I am far more worried about my country being transformed from a constitutional democracy into a xenophobic oligarchy than I am about it being “dragged down to the level of” destitute immigrants. I don’t fear immigrants at all. I don’t feel the need to scapegoat or demonize immigrants. Immigrants are not my enemy, and they are not what is destroying this country. I don’t view immigrants the same way you do. I think immigrants helped make this country the economic giant it is today. I think that immigrants do important and vital jobs that more economically fortunate Americans won’t do. I think that immigrants are still at the heart of this country’s success, and that they have an enormous amount to contribute.
Immigrants deserve our gratitude, not our contempt.
By Gaius, September 29, 2006 @ 8:59 pm
Yes, Kathy. Immigrants absolutely deserve our gratitude. It is the ones who break our laws to get here that do not. This is really a pointless discussion. You are based in idealism, I’m a realist.
The story you reference above, by the way, smells a bit like feel-good (or bad, as you will) storytelling. How much was she willing to pay that people would not take the work? Sub-sub-minimum? Here’s what actually happens when someone won’t “take the work”:
http://bluecrabboulevard.com/2006/09/15/cry-me-a-river/
By Kathy, September 29, 2006 @ 9:24 pm
Gaius, “the ones who break our laws to get here” do so because, as pitifully low as their wages here are, those wages are far more than they could hope to make at home, and they have families at home who are starving.
Now ask yourself who benefits from those low labor costs in places like Mexico. How do stores like Wal-Mart and K-Mart and Target keep their prices so low? Why do clothes and toys all say “Made in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, the Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China,” etc., etc.
If it weren’t for those third-world countries, Americans would have to pay a lot more for their clothing and toys and electronic devices.
I just find it illogical to condemn Mexicans et al. for coming to the U.S. illegally in search of better wages while ignoring the fact that American companies seek out those countries and export their jobs to those countries precisely *because* of those low wages. Perhaps WE are part of the problem of illegal immigration.
That is what being realistic means.
And by the way, if you are not “based in idealism,” then you are not based in one of the most fundamental outlooks associated with being American. The founders of this country were both idealistic AND realistic. What could be more idealistic than “liberty and justice for all”?
By Kathy, September 29, 2006 @ 9:29 pm
By the way, fwiw, I don’t think this discussion is pointless, even if it were true that I am based solely in idealism and you solely in realism. If you and I were based in the same way of viewing the world, what would be the point of talking to each other at all?
I talk to people whose views are radically different from mine because it’s more stimulating and enjoyable than talking only to people who share my views. Talking to the latter is comforting, and there’s a place for that; but talking to the former is challenging.
If I could persuade you of nothing else, I wish I could persuade you of that.
By Gaius, September 29, 2006 @ 10:02 pm
Okay, let’s try it this way then: Let’s assume the flood of illegals is overwhelmingly made up of people looking for a better life. (they are, BTW). Let’s assume most are harmless, gentle people (which I believe). Let’s also assume there is a percentage that cross the border with frankly bad intentions (there is ample evidence of that, can we agree?).
Let’s suppose someone comes across that border with a nuclear weapon. This is no longer a theoretical exercise at that point, can we agree on that?
So, if an American city ceases to exist because someone got a nuke across an open border can we agree that would be a bad thing?
Still in favor of an unprotected border and unregulated illegal immigration? Think really hard before you answer this one. Because it may well be the city you live in that could be the target.
I have nothing against immigrants who do it the right way. In happier times, I could not have frankly cared less about a few people crossing illegally.
This is not a happy time and we have a real, serious enemy out there who will kill us if we let them.
That is why we have to get control of the border. Not stop immigration. Get control. See the difference?
By Kathy, September 30, 2006 @ 11:24 am
I agree that some of the people who cross our borders do so with bad intentions. I also agree that a nuclear weapon could be smuggled into the country, as it could at any international airport or across any border.
I do agree that we have to have control over our borders. I don’t agree that a fence or a wall is the way to do it. In fact, in my view, putting up a fence or a wall is a clear admission that we have *failed* to get control of our borders.
Why are you concerned only, or so much more, about nukes coming from the direction of Mexico and Central America?
If the possibility of a nuke coming across the border is a compelling concern, then we have to close all our borders. Close them, not control them. As long as we let anyone who doesn’t already live here into the U.S., then we are risking a nuclear device being smuggled into the country.
And btw, although I know that a nuclear weapon is a mortal danger no matter where in the country one lives, since I live right outside New York City, if I’m going to be afraid that someone will smuggle in a nuclear weapon, I’m going to be much more concerned about all the ways it could be smuggled in through the access points in my area — or from Canada, which is much closer to where I live than is Mexico — than I am going to be about the ways it could be smuggled in from Mexico.
Your thoughts?
By Black Jack, October 3, 2006 @ 2:14 pm
Kathy, your defense of the Berlin Wall analogy doesn’t hold water. The East Germans built the wall to keep their own people in. We’re building a fence to keep other people out. There’s big difference, and the two are not analogious at all.