Posted by
arandomguy on Thursday, October 26, 2006 11:59:51 PM
Hooray, its a victory for conservatives, and for America today, because President Bush signed the border fence bill into law. It was passed by the Senate shortly before they recessed for the elections, and Bush just signed it today. It contains the authorization to DHS to build 700 miles of fence along the US-Mexico border, an increasing source of illegal immigration into this country.
This should help Republicans, by showing conservatives and moderates that their party is the one that is tough on border security, and that the Republicans are the people to keep this country safe. And if the Republicans want to stand two swishes of a monkey's tail in November, they must continuously point out that Democrats will severely cripple this country's efforts to combat terrorism, and keep our country safe.
There are a few problems with the bill however. First, it does not require that the fence be built, only gives the money to DHS and "suggests" it be used for fence building. Second, by all estimates, 1.2 billion will not be enough money to build 700 miles of fence. Indeed, a 14 mile stretch of fence cost over 125 billion. John Kyl addressed this problem however, because he said that congress would approve new funding of the fence every year, and that after 3 years, 370 miles should be complete - effectively sealing off Arizona from Mexico.
The first problem, however has not been addressed. I hope that the government sticks with this plan, and keeps working until the entire fence is built, but if the liberals take control of congress, we can't be sure the funding will stick. And, with President Bush's own... bizarre position on illegal immigration, we can't be fully guaranteed that he will have the political will to stick with this project.
Yet still, we should not lament too much. It is a drastically improved scenario from where we were last year, with the illegal protests, and other such nightmares.
Though I do have one question. Since when does it cost 1.2 billion dollars to put up a fence? I know 700 miles equates to a lot of fence... but that seems like a lot of money for a fence. It's probably not, knowing how the government works, but still, it seems funny that the government would require this much money to build, of all things, a fence.