The devil is in the details.
Remember Clinton's 100,000 cops?
According to T.J. Bonner, the BP actually LOST 1000 agents last year due to budget cuts. Budget CUTS!!! The President has said that he wants to use their budget for more high tech stuff - which means even less agents. Now, we're already detecting more border intruders than we can handle (we can only catch 1 in 5), why would we want to improve our detection capabilities and not also improve our interdiction capabilities!? Insanity!
The bill only authorizes a 10,000 increase in Border Patrol Agents, it does not provide funding. Back in the 1980s congress would authorize a 1,000 increase in Border Patrol Agents each year, and each year they would fail to provide funding. They could go back to their districts and claim they support border enforcement and no one in the MSM would call them on it.
I think what is going on here is classic triangulation. Congress is going to get their border security provisions passed but they will have to give Bush his guest worker program to do it. Bush can live with the security provisions so long as he passes the guest worker program which will be promoted that it enhances overall border security. In some ways it will.
The dems will be in an impossible position, if they go against the legislation they will appear either week on border security or anti immigrant, take your pick.