Senate Approves A Fence
The Senate voted to build 370 miles of triple-layered fencing along the Mexican border Wednesday and clashed over citizenship for millions of men and women who live in the United States illegally.
Amid increasingly emotional debate over election-year immigration legislation, senators voted 83-16 to add fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers along the southern border. It marked the first significant victory in two days for conservatives seeking to place their stamp on the contentious measure.
But this is troubling:
The prospects were less favorable for their attempt to strip out portions of the legislation that could allow citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants and create new guest worker programs.
Building this fence (or fences, as the case may be) is only useful as long as we also reduce incentive for illegal immigrants to come here. If we subsequently grant the clemency (or amnesty, "path to citizenship," whatever you want to call it) we only provide more incentive for them to get here. We will be telling them that while we'll try to keep them out we'll probably just reward them with citizenship if they can get here and live under the radar long enough.
That's a sure-fire way to ensure that our new fence gets knocked over as even more illegals rush to the border.















