Thomas Sowell has written a great column that got me asking some questions.
Sowell states that:
Virtually every step — even token steps — that Congress and the administration have taken toward securing the border has been backed into under pressure from the voters.This makes my head want to explode! Why is it only when faced with pressure from voters do they take upholding the law seriously? How can it be that our government is so ineffective in following through on what they promised? What good is stepping up "tough" penalites when they are never carried out?
The National Guardsmen who were sent to the border but not assigned to guard the border, the 700-mile fence on paper that has become the two-mile fence in practice, and the existing “tough” penalties for the crime of crossing the border illegally that in practice mean turning the illegal border crossers loose so that they can try, try again — such actions speak louder than words.
Sowell goes on about their motives:
This bill gets the issue off the table and out of the political spotlight. That solves the problem of politicians who want to mollify American voters in general without risking the loss of the Hispanic vote.Hispanic vote? I have a silly question, Don't you need to be a citizen of our country to vote in a federal election? Or is this just another law tossed to the wayside? The voter application I saw stated that you need to be. If that federal law was enforced it would take the politics out of illegal immigration.
The Hispanic vote can be expected to become larger and larger as the new de facto amnesty can be expected to increase the number of illegal border crossers, just as the previous — and honestly labeled — amnesty bill of 1986 led to a quadrupling of the number of illegals.
The larger the Hispanic vote becomes, the less seriously are the restrictive features of the immigration bill likely to be enforced.
I'm tired of being mollified by congress and the Bush administration's soft stance on this issue.
