Illegal immigration - time to saddle up, folks! - Granite Grok

Illegal immigration – time to saddle up, folks!

I expect that Obamessiah is going to act like the regular politician he is ("a new kind of politics"?  No, just a better speaker and an "in the tank" MSM that refuses to ask the hard questions) when it comes to enforcing our present set of laws against illegal aliens.  Yeah, I’m already getting that sinking feeling again with McCain now talking, AGAIN, about "comprehensive immigration reform".

Sidebar – you know, I’d really like to see a debate where conservative bloggers are the questions askers to Obama and liberal ones for McCain.  However, since I would predict that McCain would do alright but Obama, without his teleprompter, would fold faster than a cheap paper plate caught in a New England summer thunderstorm.

Still, from USANumbers, I just saw this:

The House Appropriations Committee now plans to consider on Tuesday (June 24) the DHS spending bill that will determine funding levels for immigration enforcement next year.

Postponement of the planned markup of the bill on June 18 looks like a case of cold feet. I am proud of all the NumbersUSA members whose icy reception of talk of de-funding resulted in a blizzard of phone calls — and perhaps the cold feet.

U.S. House leaders continue to gauge whether next Tuesday they can escape public wrath if they take funding away from a couple of the most effective enforcement procedures resulting in illegal aliens leaving the country. Appropriators will decide whether to de-fund that enforcement for next year or, as we encourage the public to demand, to expand the funding.

[snip]

We cannot tell you for sure what committee leaders had planned to introduce on June 18 because they have refused to make public their bill. (Whenever that happens, we generally are correct in suspecting that they are including convoluted language designed to disguise legislation that we would oppose. If they wait to the last minute to make a bill public, we don’t have time to read and analyze it and to alert you to any dangers.)

I am an Open and Transparent Government kind of guy – I want ALL aspects of what the bureacracy and elected officials are doing to be in full view.  With the power of the ‘Net, the ability of ordinary citizens to use off-the-shelf technology to use to monitor these folks, people in government have to realize that thousands of flashlights are coming in to what used to be dark or murky corners.

We do know that there are strong currents within Congress wanting an election-year action that will look really tough against the worst criminals among illegal aliens while secretly gutting the enforcement programs that are proving effective in pushing overall illegal immigration down.

Particularly at risk are two effective efforts that the pro-illegal groups despise:

  • No. 1: 287(g) program allowing and equipping local agencies to arrest and detain illegal aliens of all kinds.
  • No. 2: Arrests of any illegal alien encountered while looking for criminal alien fugitives.

One idea floating around Congress would be to take away all funding for 287(g) and put it into a larger fund for tracking down fugitive criminal aliens.

Well, we lit it up and melted it down before, folks……time for a threepeat?

You can continue to phone committee members at 202-224-3121, asking for expanded funding for the 287(g) program for local immigration enforcement.

 

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