Posted on 05/25/2007 4:15:30 AM PDT by Baladas
WASHINGTON (AP) — Texas' senators slipped an amendment into the Senate immi-gration bill now being debated to try to give people and officials in the state more say on where border fencing is erected.
The amendment, sponsored by Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Sen. Jeff Bingaman, R-N.M., and co-sponsored by Texas Sen. John Cornyn, passed by a voice vote and requires the Department of Homeland Security to take into consideration concerns raised by states, local governments and property owners in places where fences would be constructed.
The larger immigration bill in which the amendment was included is still being debated and won't come up for a vote until June. The House has not consid-ered an immigration bill yet.
It also give the department authorization to install fencing where they think it is best used, rather than erecting it where mandated by Congress.
Texas officials have protested plans by the Homeland Security Department to erect fencing on parts of the approximately 1,200-mile Texas border with Mexico, saying they were not consulted as they were promised they would be.
The officials learned where the department wanted to put the fencing after landowners were approached and a map depicting sites for the fencing became public. Also they recently learned of a contract bid proposal.
Officials have said it would hurt relations with Mexico, could damage wildlife and hurt the industries built around the states birding and tourism industries on the border, keep landowners from using the Rio Grande to water cattle and irrigate crops and change a way of life that is binational.
The Homeland Security Department has said in response that no plans are final.
Congress last year mandated construction of a 700-mile border fence that would run piecemeal from California to Texas, along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Hutchison and Cornyn, both Republicans, voted for the fence after withdrawing an amendment to require local input.
They were promised by Republican leaders they could include in a sweeping appropriations bill, but Congress adjourned last session without passing appropriations bills.
“could change a way of life that is binational.”
That would be the point of a bill to fix our invasion problem.
NO AMNESTY! SECURE THE BORDER! The rest is just conversation.
LLS
Have any of you geniuses heard of gates? Build the wall or their won't be much left of "relations". The best neighbors I ever had were the ones I ones I toasted a cup of cappuccino with over the hedge each morning.
chicagotribune.com
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-kass24may24,1,9363.column?coll=chi-news-col
Southern border, bad policy exposed
John Kass
May 24, 2007
Without a fence across our southern border with Mexico, without a border that is controlled and secure, can Americans have faith in what Washington politicians are doing with the so-called immigration reform bill?
I don’t think so.
The lack of a controlled border, and the federal government’s unwillingness to secure that border over recent Democratic and Republican administrations, undermines American confidence that immigration reform is anything more than raw politics.
And now President Bush is pushing an important immigration bill without first having built the fence, which tells the rest of us outside Washington that we can expect future federal enforcement of immigration laws to be about as energetic as it has always been, just about as vigorous as their fence construction.
......But without real control of our borders, to know who is coming over and why — not to mention potential terrorists — then no immigration reform can be considered legitimate. And legitimacy is necessary to win popular support for some kind of compromise that has to get done for the 12 million illegal immigrants who live here and for those of us who are citizens...”
excerpt
So....no fence, and no additional Border Patrol Agents; in other words, no enforcement.
Buuuuut, it’s not amnesty. (Is it `compassionate conservatism’?)
All together now: `kumbaya Over Lords, kumbaya......’
Tell me, is Hutchison the most stupid Senator in Washington? Do you have another candidate? Perhaps she and Murray could do America a favor, quit the Senate and open a quilt store somewhere. Second, who is the bigger weasel, Arlen Spector or Cornyn?
As long as Barbie Boxcar is in the Senate, Kay will simply have to wait her turn in the Stupid Derby.
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