700-Mile Border Fence
Likely Won't Be Built
Mid-American News
In the last weeks leading up to the November mid-term elections, an anxious and scandal-ridden Republican-led Congress eager to appeal to conservative voters authorized construction of a 700-mile fence along the U.S. border with Mexico. But just as soon as the news hit the airwaves, lawmakers swiftly but quietly backtracked by passing companion legislation that virtually ensures most of the security fence will never be built.
GOP leaders singled out the fence as a major accomplishment, heralding belated attention to the massive illegal immigration pouring across America's inadequately defended southern border for the last several decades. But in the hours before recessing, both the House and Senate voted to give the Bush administration broad latitude to distribute the authorized $1.2 billion fence money to a combination of other different projects, not just the fence. The legislation allows the funds to be spent on roads, technology, and so-called "tactical infrastructure" to support the Department of Homeland Security's preferred option that it calls a "virtual fence." That option does not physically prevent illegal border crossing. It only detects where breaches occur.
In an apparent betrayal of widely trumpeted campaign promises to conservative supporters to place priority on border security, GOP leaders pledged in writing that American Indian tribes, members of Congress, governors, and local political leaders can exercise their own judgement in "the exact placement" of any fence structure, and granted blanket authority to Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, an amnesty supporter, to use alternatives "when fencing is ineffective or impractical."
In other words, Congress granted veto power over fence construction to a multitude of any number of potential pro-immigration interests.
An analysis of the legislation by the Washington Post noted that "the loopholes leave the Bush administration with authority to decide where, when and how long a fence will be built, except for small stretches east of San Diego and in western Arizona."
"It's one thing to authorize. It's another thing to actually appropriate the money and do it," noted Sen. John Cornyn, R-TX, a staunch ally of the Bush administration who has in the past backed various amnesty proposals.
Based on interviews with GOP political campaign planners, the Washington Post reported that bait-and-switch tactic deployed on the border fence issue "reflects political calculations by GOP strategists that voters do not mind the details" of legislation, and thereby satisfies opposition to the border fence expressed by administration officials, the business interests backing the GOP, and the Mexican government.
In October Ruben Aguilar, spokesman for outgoing Mexican President Vicente Fox, triumphantly told reporters in Mexico City that the U.S. will probably never build the fence because although its construction has been authorized, the funds have been appropriated.
"There is no money to build it, so it won't be built," Aquilar told corporate media representatives. "Even though the wall was approved, there is no funding."
Mexican interests lobbied strongly against the fence, and Mexico itself announced it would call on the United Nations to try to stop it if construction gets under way.
"Without a doubt, we are examining, with the foreign relations legal team, what options are open at an international level and we will take them," vowed Luis Ernesto Derbez, Fox's foreign secretary.
Fox himself, whose country benefits from mass illegal immigration as millions of impoverished Mexicans transfer their health and economic burdens away from Mexico and onto the backs of American taxapayers, called the fence "shameful." Echoing criticism from former Soviet Communist leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Fox compared the fence to the Berlin Wall.
Mexico also threatened in a diplomatic note sent to the U.S. that relations between the two countries would be hurt. "We think it [the fence] is a gesture that doesn't reflect the friendship between the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean and the United States," said Derbez.
The double-layered fence is estimated to cost $3 million a mile to build. The $1.2 billion authorization was billed by GOP leaders as a "down payment."
At least one senator admitted the finished product is unlikely to resemble to all the political hype. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-NH, chairman of the Senate subcommittee that funds the Department of Homeland Security, said that only about half of the fencing is likely to be built.
"I think there'll be fencing where the department feels that it makes sense," said Greg. He told the Post he thought "at least 300 to 400 miles" might be built.
The U.S. border with Mexico is 2,000 miles long.
Russ Knocke, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security declined to affirm to the Washington Post whether all 700 miles of fencing would ever be built.
Although an estimated 12 million to 16 million illegal aliens have entered the county in recent decades, the department prefers to "test" a high-tech detection system, rather than begin construction on security fencing.
"We plan to build a little and test a little," said Knocke. "Stay tuned. We're optimistic that Congress is going to provide the department with flexibility."
He said the department plans to spend $67 million to test a remote sensing system he called a "virtual fence" along a small 28 mile stretch of the border south of Tucson over an eight month period.
Despite the apparent betrayal of voters, the GOP's top immigration negotiator and champion of border security embarked on what he called a "victory tour" of border states in the weeks before the election, trumpeting the message that Republicans are for border security. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. of Wisconsin, the primary author of the House's popular immigration enforcement legislation that the Senate refused to consider, claimed that supporters of border security have won a major victory.
"I want the American public to know that we won on this, and the House Republicans were able to not only pass, but fund important border security measures," he said. Sensenbrenner is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
At news conferences in Scottsdale, Arizona, and San Diego, Sensenbrenner touted the GOP's prowess in meeting the demands of voters.
"It's what the people of this country want," he said. "They want to know that we're modernizing the border so we can better secure the border."
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