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 News from Around the Americas | July 2007 
GOP Senators Revive Border Security Plan
 Andrew Taylor - Associated Press
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| | Local paddlers embark for a 90-minute float down the Rio Grande to protest a proposed border security wall along the Texas/Mexico border, in Fronton, Texas July 14, 2007. Dozens of paddlers took to the waters of the Rio Grande to protest a planned security fence along the U.S.-Mexico border that supporters say will stem the tide of illegal immigration from the south. (Reuters/Christa Cameron) |
Washington - With a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the dustbin, Senate Republicans sought Wednesday to win passage of its most popular piece, a $3 billion plan to beef up security along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The budget-busting GOP measure would be added — over White House opposition — to a pending bill to fund the budget for the Department of Homeland Security.
But Republican sponsors such as Judd Gregg of New Hampshire said securing U.S. borders is as important a priority as fighting terrorism and the war in Iraq.
The move comes in the wake of the collapse in the Senate of President Bush's immigration plan, a carefully negotiated compromise combining the popular border security initiative with a deeply controversial plan to legalize as many as 12 million unlawful immigrants.
The White House has already threatened a veto of the underlying homeland security bill for breaking Bush's budget and Gregg said the White House opposes the border security plan offered by Senate Republicans.
"The administration position ... is that they oppose it," Gregg said.
During the immigration debate last month, proponents of the broader approach such as Bush and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina argued that splitting up the compromise immigration package and passing border enforcement first would doom the broader effort.
But Graham said Wednesday that the public won't accept more controversial elements — such as a plan to give million of illegal immigrants a way to earn U.S. citizenship, dubbed "amnesty" by opponents — until the porous border with Mexico is made more secure.
"Border security is the gate that you must pass through to get to overall comprehensive reform," said Graham, who is up for re-election next year and facing political heat at home for backing Bush's unpopular immigration plan.
The emergency border security funding proposal is similar to one Republicans tacked onto an immigration measure to garner more GOP support for the bill, which died last month.
Democrats had supported that move — an infusion of $4.4 billion in mandatory funding — as a way of drawing broader backing for the compromise bill.
But it also includes several provisions that Democrats said went too far, such as allowing law enforcement officers to question people about their immigration status, cracking down harshly on people who overstay their visas, and imposing mandatory prison sentences on illegal border crossers.
For their part, Senate Democrats mulled their options on the GOP plan, which requires 60 votes to pass the 100-member Senate since it would be financed through additional debt. Democrats didn't immediately signal a willingness to kill the plan outright.
"On first glance, there's some stuff in this proposal we can support, but much of it also appears to be pretty objectionable," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
The GOP move is reminiscent of the successful plan last year to pass a bill to build vehicle barriers and a 700-mile fence on the southern border aimed at keeping out illegal immigrants from Mexico and other countries.
That effort was passed under GOP control of the House and Senate after the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration plan and House GOP leaders countered with the border fence initiative. |
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