83-16

The Senate overwhelmingly approved the Sessions Amendment by an 83-16 vote. The Sessions Amendment mandates the building of 370 miles of border fence in and around urban areas and 500 miles of vehicle barriers. The estimated cost for these barriers, according to Sen. Sessions, is $900 million. During his floor speech, Sen. Sessions said that he’d already gotten estimates from contractors on the project.

Needless to say, this is a major victory for conservatives who’ve been clamoring for a enforcement first bill. Combine that with the immediate deployment of National Guard units to the border, the hiring and training of an additional 6,000 Border Patrol officials, and you have a serious border security system.

These days, conservatives compare the current legislation to Simpson-Mazzoli. How any intellectually honest conservative can reach the conclusion that the curent legislation is just Simpson-Mazzoli II is beyond me. Here’s the Indiana University capsule on Simpson-Mazzoli:

Senator Alan Simpson, R-Wyoming and Representative Romano Mazzoli, D-Kentucky, recognized that illegal immigration could not be stopped entirely at the borders of our nation and proposed a different approach to curbing the problem. The Simpson-Mazzoli Act imposed sanctions on employers who knowingly hired illegal aliens. It also offered legal amnesty to immigrants who could prove that they had been living continuously in the U.S. since 1982, a concession to the reality that illegal immigrants who had been living in the U.S. for a long period of time had submerged in society and would remain difficult to identify.

Do you see anything in that description that hints of beefing up border security? Anything that increases Border Patrol staffing? Anything that builds 370 miles of triple-layered fencing and 500 more miles of vehicle barriers? Simpson-Mazzoli didn’t put in place a series of hurdles in the path to citizenship like this legislation has.

Frankly, conservatives are lying when they call this amnesty. Let me illustrate this anecdotally. Let’s suppose 2 men rob a bank. One is convicted, serves time in prison, then is paroled. The erstwhile bankrobber stays clean during his parole. The other bankrobber isn’t caught, is convicted in absentia and he’s eventually pardoned by the President. I’d submit to you that one made restitution to the bank, paid his debt to society, met all the stipulations that the judge imposed, then stayed clean during his parole. The other was convicted of a crime, then pardoned.

The end result is that they’re both free men at the end of a certain period of time. We’d be intellectually dishonest, though, if we said that they both were pardoned. We’d be laughed at if we said that.

Similarly, Simpson-Mazzoli said that illegal aliens had a relatively simple path to total amnesty. This legislation puts in place a series of conditions that must be met even before they could apply for citizenship.

The other thing that intellectually honest conservatives must shoot down is the enforcement only/first peoples’ argument. As Tony Snow pointed out on Sean Hannity’s show this afternoon, the Senate bill gives the border patrol more officers and more fence than the bill that Tom Tancredo supports.

How on earth a conservative can say that the House bill is superior enforcement-only legislation is laughable.

THE WINDBAG RAGES ON

Kennedy On Immigration: Detached From Reality, Part II (Video)

By Greg Tinti on May 17, 2006 at 01:12 PM

Click to Download (.wmv)

Another example of Sen. Ted Kennedy's twisted logic on display. According to Kennedy, "the idea that border security, in and of itself, of fencing or non-fencing is going to solve this problem just defies...DEFIES...recent history." His proof? After California erected a fence in that state, there was a spike in the number of people who died crossing the border--through Arizona.

Kennedy is purposely conflating two issues here and implying that physical fences actually lead to more death. But the obvious point Kennedy ignores is that the California fence was effective in preventing entrance to the United States but led to more crossings in Arizona. Now, logic dictates that had there been a fence in Arizona as well, it would have prevented people from crossing there and--more importantly--saved the lives of the majority of those people that died trying to cross.

Even worse, Kennedy would rather have a "virtual fence" which would likely allow more people to cross in dangerous areas and would have much less of an impact than an actual fence on lowering the number of people whom die from crossing our border. That doesn't make much sense to me. But as you've probably gleaned from the title of this post, this isn't the first time that Kennedy's been totally detached from reality on the immigration issue.

Flashback here.

UPDATE: Welcome Michelle Malkin and Hot Air readers!

UPDATE II: Robin Schaffran quips in the comments, "I suggest we replace the real security fence around Ted Kennedy's home estate with a virtual fence instead and see if that provides him with the security he needs."

UPDATE III: BREAKING: The Senate just voted 83-16 in favor of a 370 mile triple-layered border fence and 500 miles of vehicle barriers on the border. It is unknown at this time whether vehicle barriers also cause death.

THE PRICE OF A FENCE

By Michelle Malkin

The Senate ignores the Windbag from Massachusetts and votes:

The Senate voted to build 370 miles of triple-layered fencing along the Mexican border Wednesday and clashed over citizenship for millions of men and women who live in the United States illegally.

Amid increasingly emotional debate over election-year immigration legislation, senators voted 83-16 to add fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers along the southern border. It marked the first significant victory in two days for conservatives seeking to place their stamp on the contentious measure.

But if the price of the fence is this...

The prospects were less favorable for their attempt to strip out portions of the legislation that could allow citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants and create new guest worker programs.

...is it worth it? And given past history and yesterday's vote against enforcement first, you already know which provision--the amnesty, not the fence--is the Senate's top priority and which will be in place first.

House Republicans aren't falling for the ruse, and continue to push for enforcement FIRST:

Across the Capitol in the House, the story was different. Republicans pushed through a border security bill last year, and several members of the rank-and-file have criticized Bush for his proposals. To calm their concerns, the White House dispatched Karl Rove to their weekly closed-door meeting.

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, an outspoken opponent of the Senate bill, derided the effort. "I didn't see it was a persuasive event. If it was about Karl Rove seeking to convince members of Congress after debate that he's right and we're wrong it would have been better not to have the meeting," he said.

King said Rove told lawmakers Bush is sincere about enforcement. But, he added, "The president doesn't want to enforce immigration law because he's afraid he'll inconvenience someone who wants to come into the country for a better life."

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., agreed that Rove did not seem to have been persuasive. "It's not the kind of issue you can compromise on; either you're giving amnesty to people who are here illegally or you aren't."

Meanwhile, here's just a small reminder of the cost of this nation's long history of open-borders empty gestures.

***

Should be an interesting scene in Washington in about an hour. The illegal alien lobby says it'll have 100,000 amnesty-demanding activists pounding the pavement. I can't make it there tonight, but hope to have a few eyewitness reports. Wonder if the MSM will EVER cover these radicalized protests in a fair and balanced way...

Who will be building the fence? Reader Daniel G. imagines the news story:

Illegal Immigrants Hired to Build Fence To Keep Illegal Immigrants Out

"They'll work for cheap and get the job done right,'' Pres. Bush said.

MORE ON THE MEXICAN INVASION

If you're a fan of unbridled arrogance you're going to love this one. It would seem that the government of Mexico is threatening lawsuits. Yup .. you got it right. Lawsuits. Mexico's Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez has said that if the Mexican government sees that our National Guard is starting to detain people ... he means Mexicans, of course ... thus preventing them from entering our country illegally ... then the government of Mexico will start filing lawsuits.

Boil down the Foreign Secretary's comments ... If the United States National Guard actually takes any action to protect the borders of the United States by holding back the invasion force then we're going to sue.

One would expect that some highly-ranked U.S. official would stand up and up somewhere and tell the Mexican government that the United States intends to defend its borders, and that any lawsuits brought against our government as a result of those efforts will be considered to be a hostile act. Well .. you might expect that, but you had best not hold your breath.

A 'LAND OF IMMIGRANTS?"

I'm getting a bit tired of Bush's constant references to the fact that we're a "land of immigrants." He's right, of course ... but he seems unwilling to highlight the fact that our ancestors, the immigrants he's talking about, came here legally. They followed the law. They didn't seek an advantage over anyone else by jumping the line. Our ancestral heritage is one of adherence to the law. This is a claim that cannot be made by the tens of millions of Mexicans and Hispanics who have, in effect, told us to take our rule-of-law and stick it.

JOHNNY ISAKSON'S AMENDMENT FAILS

Georgia Republican Senator Johnny Isakson offered a common-sense amendment to the Senate immigration bill. Isakson's amendment would have simply put off the establishment of a so-called "guest worker" program .. which is, of course, an amnesty program, until the Department of Homeland Security could certify to the U.S. Congress that our border with Mexico is secure. In short, Isakson's amendment would have mandated that we first shut off the flood before we try to clean up the flood damage. Isakson's amendment was shot down in the Senate by a vote of 55-40. The Senate sent the message ... don't secure the border first.

WE MUST CONSIDER THIS POSSIBILITY

By their actions our elected officials in Washington are sending us a rather strong message: We are not going to take any affirmative action to insure that the Mexican invasion across our southern border is brought to a halt. We must consider the possibility that these politicians want this invasion to continue because it serves their political needs. For the Democrats, this one is easy. Enabling the invasion is step one. Amnesty for those who have crossed our borders is step two. Step three will be figuring out a way to get those who were once illegal aliens, but by virtue of the amnesty program are illegal no more, to the polls to vote; presumably for Democrats. As for the Republicans? Well, there's always those heavy-duty contributors who benefit from the cheap labor offered by the invasion force. It's also possible that Republicans might actually believe that this legitimized invasion force will be prone to vote Republican!

This controversy over the Mexican invasion all boils down to one simple fact. It is fair to say that job one for the president and the members of congress is to defend and protect the borders of this country. In that regard they can be considered as nothing less than failures.