When it was approved by Congress and signed into law by President Bush, the bill authorizing construction of 700 miles of fencing along the southern border was supposed to be a good faith gesture of Washington’s new-found seriousness about stopping illegal immigration and protecting homeland security. The intent of the security fence was to create sufficient obstacles to illegal entry to discourage people from trying and to give the Border Patrol a fighting chance to catch those who decided to try anyway.

Barely a year later the border security fence project itself is facing nearly insurmountable obstacles. On the day after Christmas, President Bush signed into law the Omnibus Appropriations Bill of 2008 that may effectively prevent any sort of meaningful security barrier from being constructed. Hidden in the comprehensive spending package is language that:

Strips the requirement for double fencing, which would have allowed the Border Patrol to scoop up those who made it through the first line of defense. This provision was authored by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.).
Ties in knots current and future construction by requiring that a variety of federal, state and local entities be consulted before construction commences. These include the federal Departments of Agriculture and Interior; state and local governments; Indian tribes; and property owners. Also authored by Sen. Hutchison, this provision is meant “to minimize the impact on the environment, culture, commerce and quality of life for residents and communities” along the border.
Without formally killing the border security fence, the Omnibus Appropriations Bill builds in endless construction delays and undermines the effectiveness of whatever limited sections of the barrier are constructed.

As far back as the 1980s, models have been created for effectively controlling the flow of illegal traffic across our borders. Moreover, in areas where fencing is in place, like San Diego, the illegal flow has been slowed to a trickle and the adverse effect to the local environment caused by mass illegal border crossing reduced.

This Bill Demonstrates the Government’s Bad Faith

During the 2007 debate about the Senate’s so-called comprehensive immigration bill, it was consistently argued that the federal government cannot be trusted to fulfill any pledge to enforce immigration laws. While illegal aliens and cheap labor employers would have received immediate and irrevocable benefits from the Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill, the American public would have received nothing more than promises of future enforcement. The back door tactic of gutting the border fence through the appropriations process demonstrates once again to the American people that our government’s promises to enforce immigration laws are not worth the taxpayer funded paper they’re printed on.

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