American Republic Online

Well it was Oct 26, 2006 President Bush signed into law a fence for 700 of the 2000 miles of southern border:

“Within about three years, we should have about 370 miles,” said [Senator] Kyl, whose state would be virtually sealed from Mexico through fencing and other barriers.

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Ralph Basham said the fence could take many forms, from chain link to solid wall, depending on where it is placed. The shape will be determined with the help of Boeing Co., which was awarded a $67 million contract to install a high-tech “virtual fence” along 28 miles in Arizona. - Washington Post (10/27/06)

18 months later, how’s that 370 miles coming? Half way would be 185 miles of fence, Senator. Senator?  Most recently the virtual fence has been deemed an utter failure who’s “design will not be used as the basis for future developments”.  Yeah it’s not even worth building on for a virtual fence version 2.  Oh and I like how now that it failed it only cost tax payers $20M not the true $67M.  Sounds better when you only mention the construction costs and not the $47M of “other costs”.

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Perhaps named for the hope that the voters wouldn’t notice this time, the DREAM act amnesty failed cloture and was killed before it could get going. Here’s the latest plan for stealth amnesty:

Legal status for illegals that are less than 30, have graduated high school or have a GED and claim that they entered the country illegally before turning 16. (We’ll just check that against their immigration records - oh wait.) Also, in the interest of “family unity” or other “humanitarian purposes”, their families can stay. Families simply need to be claimed not verified by blood test or other means.

Popular guess-timates place this at legalizing 12 of the guess-timated 20 million illegals. It did strike me as funny that when the Dems are trying to slip amnesty under the radar, “a child” is defined as someone under 16, but when they’re expanding government health care “a child” is someone under 26.
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This is just sad really…

• Six illegal immigrants arrested at Qualcomm

Wildfires are raging all across southern California. A quarter of a million people have been evacuated from their homes in San Diego alone. Almost two hundred thousand homes stand vacant. High winds are preventing any real progress against the blaze.

With 13 different wildfires across the state, the causes are abundant, but experts believe that illegal immigrants are to blame in starting at least one of the wildfires. Illegals camping in the desert often leave camp fires unattended or don’t completely put out a fire before moving on. Unfortunately, in such remote areas the fires can spread over quite a large area before being noticed by the authorities.

With the home values in California among the highest in the country, these fires could easily cause billions of dollars in damages. Remember that, the next time someone tries to say that illegals don’t cost our country anything.
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A look at the cost of immigration in New Jersey:

Two studies in New Jersey and California in the 90s found

…immigrants used government services at a greater rate than native-born residents did… the typical immigrant family received about $4,044 annually in government services, about 11 percent higher than the average native-born family…

 The net result was that “the average native household generated an annual fiscal surplus of $232” to government, while “the typical foreign household was a net burden of $1,484.”  The gap was even wider in California, where immigrant households produced a net deficit of $3,463 each…

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It’s extremely rare, but it does happen on occasion. Thanks to YouTube you can see the fun few minutes without the drool inducing hours of in-between. These clips occurred after the Republicans won a close vote to bar illegal immigrants from receiving any federal funds apportioned in the agricultural spending bill for employment or rental assistance. Shortly after the final vote was gaveled and the outcome announced, there was a small hubbub and a new tally was announced: victory Democrats.

The swing came from a few votes that were “missed” in the first tally. Now since the House exists to take and tally votes, one can only point to incompetence or ethical issues in this Democratically run congress.

• Video: House Erupts in Chaos
• Video: Republican Whip Blunt Addresses the House Floor

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After another flood of grass roots campaigning (read droves of ticked off voters), the Senate backed away from the Immigration Amnesty bill part deux. In a significant, two day turn-around the 2nd Cloture vote failed 46 to 53. That’s a huge swing from 64-35. Today’s vote had 15 Democrats and 38 Republicans voting with the people.
Today, American’s can celebrate that their politicians still fear losing their jobs enough to produce some results. And barring some unforeseen lunacy, the immigration debacle will be dead for the rest of this year’s session. Perhaps, now the government will focus on building that fence they authorized last fall - seeing as they claimed that immigration problem need to be handled right now.

Speaking of the fence, did you hear that some of the fence that was recently built was constructed one to six feet on the Mexican side of the border. Due to Mexican government demands, it must be torn down and rebuilt on US soil. Not only does the flub create another waste of tax payer dollars, it doesn’t really inspire confidence in our border related abilities.
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The “second” immigration bill is up for it’s second cloture vote today to cut off debate and move towards voting for it.  This cloture vote is coming quickly because of an agreed upon limit of 30 hours of debate.  Here’s a link to the amendment package in HTML or PDF format.

• Immigration Amendment Package

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The Zogby Interactive poll of 8,300 adults nationwide finds just 3% of Americans viewing Congress’s handling of the immigration issue in favorable terms, while 9% say the same of the President-even as respondents in the survey rated it the second most important issue facing the country, after the war in Iraq.

• UPI/Zogby Poll: Government Mishandling Immigration

UPATE (by Jeff): I recently contacted Senator Corker regarding the new immigration bill.  Here’s a part of his response.  Although a form letter, I think he (his staff writers?) nailed it pretty well:

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