EckerNet.Com

There is a showdown over the border fence building in Congress.  Obama made lots of campaign promises to get rid of the border fence and loosen restrictions on illegal immigration, and liberals are expecting him to deliver.  At the same time public sentiment is still greatly in favor of cracking down on illegal immigration.  High unemployment has the public in no mood to compete with unrestricted illegal immigration.  And border violence and now the emergence of the swine flu, has the public rather unwilling to let things slide on border enforcement.

Late last week, Rep. Duncan Hunter introduce a bill (HR 2083) to build another 350 miles of fencing on the border.  This is partly to further secure the border and partly to compensate for the Department of Homeland Security\’s total incompetence.

Originally DHS was require to build 700 miles of fencing, and it was clearly understood that it was going to be the Israeli style fencing.  They only built 600 miles and most of it is vehicle barriers which are useless for preventing illegal immigration.  They\’re not even useful for preventing drug smuggling.  It\’s very easy to drive a vehicle up to the barrier on one side of the border unload their cargo to a vehicle on the other side and then both drive away and do their business.

On the other side of the issue is a bill soon to be introduced by Rep. Raul Grijalva, which is supposedly an environmental bill.  But basically they are using supposed environmental damage caused by the fencing as an excuse to kill further construction and tear down some of the completed fencing.  Such efforts are hypocritical on their face because there is nothing more damaging to the environment along the border than the flood of illegals and the mountains of trash they leave behind.

But the end result is we\’ll have these two competing bills clashing in Congress.  While Obama has made noise about immigration, he doesn\’t really want to broach this topic this session.  It\’s an incediary issue and one which he is very unlikely to win.  This is a battle better fought later in his term.  But he made promises and his supporters are expecting him to fulfill those promises.

To be honest this may very well turn out to be a good thing for conservatives.  It\’s likely to further poison congressional relations and damage Democrats support with their base because this is a fit they are unlikely to win.  While the public may be willing to have their heart-strings pulled in a good economy, during a bad economy all they are going to see is more people competing for their jobs.   And while this swine flu thing is much ado about nothing, it\’s one of those things that sticks in the public\’s mind for a long period of time.  And if border violence continues, this is going to quickly grow into a very very bitter poison pill for the Democrats to swallow.

Especially without anything to support their cause.  Even critics of the fence have to admit it\’s effectiveness.  Instead, their argument has shifted from \”it\’s not gonna work\” to \”okay yeah it\’s working but it only forces the flow of illegals to another area\”.  The problem with this argument is that this minimizes the the area the Border Patrol has to concentrate on.  A given agents instead of watching 100 miles of border, perhaps only needs to concentrate his attention on 5 miles of it.  That makes him much more effective.  Which is why border enforcement activists have never said that a fence would stop illegal immigration.  It simply acts as a force multiplier, by either concentrating or delaying illegal aliens at the border.  So BP agents can accomplish much more with far less resources.

In a down economy, effectiveness, efficiency and less illegal labor competing with real Americans are all good things.  And the Democrats are likely to find that the public is in even less of a giving mood this year.  How much they try to push will determine how much they\’ll get burned by this issue.

[Crossposted at True North]