Jun 26 2007
Border Fence Still On Track
Another amnesty hypochondria myth is being debunked:
If the effort to catch people illegally crossing the border here in the southern Arizona desert is a cat-and-mouse struggle, the Homeland Security Department says it has a smarter cat.
It comes in the form of nine nearly 100-foot-tall towers with radar, high-definition cameras and other equipment rising from the mesquite and lava fields around this tiny town.
Known as Project 28, for the 28 miles of border that the towers will scan, the so-called virtual fence forms the backbone of the Secure Border Initiative, known as SBInet, a multibillion-dollar mix of technology, manpower and fencing intended to control illegal border crossings.
If successful, hundreds of such towers could dot the 6,000 miles of the Mexican and Canadian borders.
But glitches with the radar and cameras have forced the project to miss its June 13 starting date, just as Congress focuses anew on border security in the Senate measure to overhaul immigration law.
Technical glitches, not a lack of will, have delayed this element of border security authorized only a year ago. I can tell you that, for government contracts, that is damn quick. But all the armchair experts in all things amnesty will surely bless us with all their made up excuses as to why this is not progress and will never work and so we should all give up and go home. Riiiiiiiigght.
It has been almost 8 months and they have completed 13 miles.
And you have designated yourself as the official cheerleader for their phenomenal progress?
How sad for you.
This 28 mile experiment is not part of the Border Fence Bill.
It also is not working. When in operation, it will let the people watching the cameras count the number of people crossing the border. I haven’t heard that the anti pursuit orders will be rescinded. They will still not be pursued. And they sure don’t want to detect any one smuggling that they may have to shoot at or they will end up in prison.
You should change the title of this post. It is in no way related to Border Fence.
An opinion from one that AJ classifies as an “immigration hypochondriac” racist (Linsey Graham calles them “bigots”).
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/8154032.html
Nice link, Retire! I particularly liked this quote from the article –
begin quote –
In 1986, speaking on behalf of another immigration bill, Kennedy said, “This amnesty will give citizenship to only 1.3 million illegal aliens. We will secure the borders. We will never again bring forth an amnesty bill like this.”
end quote –
It appears that Senator Kennedy and I disagree on the definition of never.
The Senate is now voting on allowing unions (big Democrat backers) to by-pass the secret ballot on when a union wants to organized at any company (HR 800). What does this mean?
As a union member, I can tell you that unions are their own worst enemy. Their numbers are falling like a brick thrown into a lake. Now, they are going to get the federal government to stack the deck for them.
Employees who are asked to vote on accepting a union or not will no longer have their ballot be a secret ballot. They will have to put their names on the ballot and this will give the strong-arm segment of a union the ability to pressure individual employees to vote in a union.
The secret ballot has been a basic right of our country.
If this passes (and with Schumer, Clinton, Kennedy all pushing for this) you can see the erosion of more Constitutional rights.
Anyone who thinks this nation is not moving closer to socialism is just plain nuts.
If any bill needs to be challanged in the SCOTUS, this is one.
Excellent vote there on the abolish secret voting in Unions cloture.
Apache, missed you for a few days there. Vacation?
And some existing fencing/vehicle barriors will have to come down. We built them in Mexico. Govermnent at it’s finest.
Texas Senator Jon Cornyn, from the floor this morning:
I was forwarded a copy of a transcript of an interview with a White House official yesterday commenting on some remarks I made surrounding the immigration bill.
I have argued that the current bill sets DHS up for failure because it requires DHS to grant full work and travel authorization to illegal aliens within 24 hours of their application whether they have completed a background check or not.
That is the text of the current immigration bill.
The White House yesterday told reporters that I was perpetuating “misunderstanding and mythology†about the provision.
First, let me quote from the text of the provision. It reads:
601 (h) (2) Timing of Probationary Benefits.—No probationary benefits shall be issued to an alien until the alien has passed all appropriate background checks or the end of the next business day, whichever is sooner.
That is what the bill says. I know people that draft language believe it is the perfect draft and believe it should attain mythical status, but this is pretty straightforward. If an alien applies, he gets legal status, full travel and work authorization, no later than the next day.
Now, the White House official believes that this provision is workable because, as he says, “Four of the layers of that background check are almost invariably completed within 24 hours.â€
Almost always completing a background check within 24 hours is not always completing a background check within 24 hours. Additionally, he acknowledges that one of the checks takes longer than 24 hours. So by his own admission, DHS will be granting full legal rights to nearly every applicant even though they who have NOT completed a background check.
This is not what the American people are hearing when they are selling this bill. The American people are being told that aliens will have to pass a background check before they are granted legal status. This is not true according to the text of the underlying bill and it is not factually possible according to the lead negotiator from the White House.
Not to be deterred by fact, the White House official believes this should be of no concern because if anything comes up in the background check beyond the 24 hours then DHS will declare the person ineligible and deport them.
Certainly that is a concept we all can support, that is if someone is ineligible they should be deported.
My concern is the gulf between the promise being made to the American people and the likelihood that that promise will actually be carried out. The White House negotiator says that this is of no concern because they will just declare them ineligible and deport them. But, the question is will they? If they already have this capability why has nothing been done about criminal aliens already?
Right now there are approximately 600,000 fugitive absconders, including criminal fugitives, in the United States. DHS has created a unit designed solely to track down, apprehend and deport these fugitives. However, there is no appreciable dent in this number. And DHS has information on these people as well.
But let’s keep in mind that as the Department of Homeland Security is so diligently tracking down the thousands of criminal aliens that their all-inclusive background checks have uncovered, that there are a myriad of others changes which they will have to affect.
1) hire, train, and deploy up to 20,000 border patrol agents
2) implement a worker verification system to screen over 200 million workers throughout the country
3) build up to 370 miles of fencing and 300 miles of vehicle barriers.
4) deploy the secure border initiative
5) deploy the exit monitoring system of US Visit
6) process 12 million initial applicants for Z visas
(7) build 105 radar and camera towers
(8) detain all removable aliens caught on the southern border utilizing detention facilities with a capacity of only 31,500 people per day
All this while keeping up with current demand in applications and preparing to re-implement the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative which clogged our passport process and proved the government’s inability to handle such enormous undertakings as the one proposed.
That’s a tough sell to say the least, Mr. President. Especially from an Administration that, as of two years ago, was doing absolutely nothing to beef up border security. It was routinely objecting to Congressional requests for more border agents and other border enforcement measures, and doing nothing to increase other infrastructure improvements needed to enforce our laws.
So once again, I fear that like in 1986, we are promising something to the American people that we cannot deliver. We should slow down, read this bill, and make sure it works.
Read it? What a novel Idea!
Been busy emailing senators today.
HR 800 fails. Constitutional rights to a secret ballot remain intact.
American workers win; union pressure/donations to certain Senators, fail.
The fence is on track? My, aren’t you the gullible one!
Apache, missed you for a few days there. Vacation?
I missed you guys as well. No vacation for me. Quite the opposite. I’ve been busy with work. And the next 6 months will only be worse. But I am not complaining. I would rather have too much work than no work.
Steve, ask AJ to send me your email address. I might be able to help. No promises, mind you. Only a “might”. Since you are opposed to relocation, that makes the task much more difficult. Any work I could arrange for you would be contract based work. That would be the best I could do since you won’t relocate. But it would at least be something, if I could get it for you. There is also the possibility of telephone tech support work? But that isn’t a lot of fun and requires amazing patience and people skills. Anyway, we can talk more via email.
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