House Votes To Stem The Tide Of Illegal Aliens

The House acted Friday to stem the tide of illegal immigration by taking steps to tighten border controls and stop unlawful immigrants from getting jobs.

Voting 239 to 182 the House overcame the objections of business groups and the vast majority of House Democrats and approved the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act.

The legislation is a hodgepodge of measures designed to regain control of the border and slow the flow of illegal immigrants across the border:

Makes illegal presence in the United States a crime, it is currently a civil offense.

Requiring employers to verify the legal status of their workers. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), made it unlawful for employers to knowingly hire or employ aliens not eligible to work and required employers to check the identity and work eligibility documents of all new employees. Under IRCA, if the documents provided by an employee reasonably appear on their face to be genuine, an employer has met its document review obligation. The easy availability of counterfeit documents has turned IRCA into a sham.

Ends the "catch and release" policy for non-Mexican illegal aliens.

Authorizes the building of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border in parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Imposes tougher penalties for smuggling and re-entry.

Directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to take all actions necessary and appropriate to achieve and maintain operational control over the entire land and maritime border.

These are all good, and long overdue steps, that will help regain control of the nation's borders and slow the overwhelming impact of millions of illegal aliens.

The struggle to regain control of who is allowed to migrate to the United States now shifts to the Senate. As the Senate considers this important issue, it is truly unfortunate that the Democrats have chosen to oppose measures designed to enable the United States to decide who gets to "migrate" to the United States, the government or illegal aliens. Only 36 of the 210 House Democrats voted for the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act. One can only conclude that Democrats are not interested in national security. After the Democrats' shameful call for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, just as the Iraqi's were about to vote for their own elected government. You wouldn't think the Democrats would actually vote against measures to secure our borders.

Comments

[Matthew Shugart]

Realistically, I suspect there might be some other possible conclusions than "Democrats are not interested in national security," though that line makes for nice polarizing spin, I suppose.

For instance, the guest-worker provisions that Bush himself has been advocating, and that many Democrats favor, were taken out of this bill, because the Republican caucus is divided on the matter.

With those provisions in, the bill would have passed, on a bipartisan vote, but with a right-wing rump of the party voting against. Take conservative Republican Representative Dan Rohrabacher's comments as illustrative:

"There are those of us who identify with the national wing [...] of the party who have always been adamant on the illegal immigration issues. And on the other side you have those people who believe in business and global marketplace concept. So you have a party with two different views on one of the major issues of the day."

Immigration reform is far, far more than national security, but one might conclude that the Republican party can't get its act together on anything but "national security," narrowly defined.