Obama Signs $600 Million Border Security Bill
Determined to show a commitment to stopping the flow of illegal immigrants, President Obama signed into law a $600 million bill putting more agents and equipment along the Mexican border.
The Senate passed the legislation a day earlier during a voice vote in a nearly empty chamber. Mr. Obama had urged Congress to channel more money toward border security amid complaints from states besieged by undocumented immigrants and illegal drug trafficking.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the chief sponsor, said the measure would provide Mr. Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano "with the boots on the ground and the resources necessary to combat the crime and violence."
Mr. Obama said the bill would help protect communities along the Southwest border and across the country.
"And this new law will also strengthen our partnership with Mexico in targeting the gangs and criminal organizations that operate on both sides of our shared border," he said in a statement.
House Approves $600 Million for Border Security
Fingerprints Misused to Deport Immigrants?
U.S.-Mexico Border Problems Persist
House Democrats had also called a special session, summoning lawmakers back from their summer break Tuesday to pass the border security bill and a $26 billion aid bill to keep teachers and other public workers from being laid off. Both issues - jobs and border security - are among those expected to be on voters' minds when they go to the polls in November.
Senate historian Donald Ritchie said it was only the second time since the August break became official policy in 1970 that the Senate had reconvened. The first time was after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The border security measure would fund the hiring of 1,000 new Border Patrol agents to be deployed at critical areas along the border, 250 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and 250 more Customs and Border Protection officers.
It provides for new communications equipment and greater use of unmanned surveillance drones. There are currently seven such drones along the border. Almost one-third of the money goes to the Justice Department to help agencies such as the FBI, the DEA and the ATF deal with drug dealers and human traffickers.
The bill is paid for by raising fees on foreign-based personnel companies that use U.S. visa programs, including the popular H-1B program, to bring skilled workers to the United States. India says higher fees would discriminate against its companies and workers.
Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl called the legislation a start. But, in a statement, they said the bill fell short by not dramatically increasing the number of customs inspectors along the Arizona border and not funding a program that charges illegal immigrants with a low-level crime and requires them to spend time in jail.
It's taken the House and Senate several tries over the past months to agree on the contents of the bill and how it should be paid for. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., said that throughout this legislative back-and-forth she had worked "to make sure that Congress knows that we are fed up with the federal government's failure along the border." She said that with Senate action, "at least this time, they are listening to us."
Immigration and Customs Enforcement director John Morton, on a visit to Phoenix, said his agency removed a record number of illegal immigrants from the country in the fiscal year ending last September. According to ICE numbers, some 387,000 were removed, of whom 35 percent were convicted criminals. Through the beginning of August this year, about half the 294,000 who have been deported were criminals, also a record level.
Arizona has been at the epicenter of the border security debate since it passed a law directing law enforcement officers to be more aggressive in seeking out illegal immigrants. Although a federal judge has since struck down some of the law's major provisions, it remains a rallying cry for those who say Washington has lost control of the border.
© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Senate passed the legislation a day earlier during a voice vote in a nearly empty chamber. Mr. Obama had urged Congress to channel more money toward border security amid complaints from states besieged by undocumented immigrants and illegal drug trafficking.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the chief sponsor, said the measure would provide Mr. Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano "with the boots on the ground and the resources necessary to combat the crime and violence."
Mr. Obama said the bill would help protect communities along the Southwest border and across the country.
"And this new law will also strengthen our partnership with Mexico in targeting the gangs and criminal organizations that operate on both sides of our shared border," he said in a statement.
House Approves $600 Million for Border Security
Fingerprints Misused to Deport Immigrants?
U.S.-Mexico Border Problems Persist
House Democrats had also called a special session, summoning lawmakers back from their summer break Tuesday to pass the border security bill and a $26 billion aid bill to keep teachers and other public workers from being laid off. Both issues - jobs and border security - are among those expected to be on voters' minds when they go to the polls in November.
Senate historian Donald Ritchie said it was only the second time since the August break became official policy in 1970 that the Senate had reconvened. The first time was after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The border security measure would fund the hiring of 1,000 new Border Patrol agents to be deployed at critical areas along the border, 250 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and 250 more Customs and Border Protection officers.
It provides for new communications equipment and greater use of unmanned surveillance drones. There are currently seven such drones along the border. Almost one-third of the money goes to the Justice Department to help agencies such as the FBI, the DEA and the ATF deal with drug dealers and human traffickers.
The bill is paid for by raising fees on foreign-based personnel companies that use U.S. visa programs, including the popular H-1B program, to bring skilled workers to the United States. India says higher fees would discriminate against its companies and workers.
Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl called the legislation a start. But, in a statement, they said the bill fell short by not dramatically increasing the number of customs inspectors along the Arizona border and not funding a program that charges illegal immigrants with a low-level crime and requires them to spend time in jail.
It's taken the House and Senate several tries over the past months to agree on the contents of the bill and how it should be paid for. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., said that throughout this legislative back-and-forth she had worked "to make sure that Congress knows that we are fed up with the federal government's failure along the border." She said that with Senate action, "at least this time, they are listening to us."
Immigration and Customs Enforcement director John Morton, on a visit to Phoenix, said his agency removed a record number of illegal immigrants from the country in the fiscal year ending last September. According to ICE numbers, some 387,000 were removed, of whom 35 percent were convicted criminals. Through the beginning of August this year, about half the 294,000 who have been deported were criminals, also a record level.
Arizona has been at the epicenter of the border security debate since it passed a law directing law enforcement officers to be more aggressive in seeking out illegal immigrants. Although a federal judge has since struck down some of the law's major provisions, it remains a rallying cry for those who say Washington has lost control of the border.
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The original beginning point for the so named Gulag, that most people are caught in, is because well informed citizens have no comprehension of Article 6, Sec, 6 of the Constitution. Clearly, this section makes it plain that all fifty states are nothing less than provinces of mother England's indirect rule under treaty obligations. The Rothschild's worked behind the scenes with specific founding fathers, in planting the Treaty clause, with both Tories and Whigs. The overthrow of our Republic was well thought of in advance. International financiers wire pulled this deal off after the Constitution was ratified, and the treaty weapon was inserted. We can scream Gulag as we please, but a global religious war is the third rail that political ****** avoid, Adding to this insult, was creating a nine justice membership to the Supreme Court. In essence, one plant like Kegan can break a tie, and compel three hundred million Americans what to do. Communism is thought control. Gulags are adjuncts of pseudo political ******. One never bites the hand that feeds them. Bread from a two-party feeding trough is better than plowing some field through sweat and brawn, while using a mule's behind as a compass. Shakespeare and Machiavelli were never proclaimed patriots. Both pseudo political whoring parties and their being controlled by a national syndicate of prospective social engineering have be -damned America, to the point of no return. The mass media is in alliance with traitors within the highest echelons of national government. The only real Gulag is the invisible rule through a Congress that has no gall to break with the approaching collectivism, of an ever encroaching national nihilism, that has been subconsciously ingrained via alien invasion, through higher education. We have may horses in waiting, but not one Patrick Henry to spread an alarm, nor Thomas Paine to openly pulpit the rights and duties of the elected, to proclaim freedom for America, and to hell with any Oriental perceptions that manage to spread openly amongst a people of whom are blinded by political traps, to lead men back into mental slavery--THOUGHT CONTROL THROUGH COMMUNIST CONTROL !
What this country needs is to protect the people's hard earned wealth of creating ways to find employment for hundreds of whom are generally unemployed on low level qualifications. We are creating a class of parasites that are milking the working people out of their productive earnings through developing s parasitic clime of artificial, but unproductive element that depends on some federal handout called federal emergency programs that have taken over the flight industry in our nation.
It is inconceiveable that a hand full of terrorist have crippled our national commercial flight industry through the commie controlled news industry with their daily inflated minor news issues being bloated to the point that the general public
runs back and forth through fear that our airlines will be eventually shut down
America needs to tell Uncle Sam to get off of its haunches and get rid of all parasitic bums and leaches and let these dead beats find more productive work. It seems that nation wide laws enforcement has taken preference over a people's ability to think straight. Law enforcement is an unproductive force that protect the great slum masters and loan sharks and political hounds of whom steal from every strong box in the nation.
Encourage honest illegal's, oximoron I know, to depart in haste in order to be first allowed back legally.
Open up millions of jobs for American's & legal residents.
Create an orderly manner for guest workers to arrive, live and for temporary ones to leave.
Eventually, the number of illegals would dwindle rather than increase.
Our needs for a low cost workforce would be filled. No one would be afraid to live openly except for anyone still here illegally.
Show the world that we can be tough but fair in regard to illegal immigrants but we will not be overrun or invaded, nor will we continue to be made a laughingstock by lawless people from other countries and their governments.
By the way, do you fully support Republican initiatives to expand border security even further? Or, for that matter, even Obama's tepid, half-arsed, politically motivated gesture?
Francisco Javier Reyes, 29, is suspected of running the underground venture while he worked for the Oklahoma anti-drug agency, court records show. He was released on bail. Neither Reyes nor his lawyer returned calls seeking comment.
this is still ongoing, i wonder why Blogdelnarco and borderland beat are the only ones carrying this story?
no wonder you Conserviturds are so backwards
I think you're being paid to spread anti-American hate.
you cant handle the truth little girl?
American Border agents are being used to smuggle guns into Mexico.
wise up.
you don't consider invading our country, without permission to be a "real crime" ?
That is the real crime, that you turn a blind-eye to the destruction of our country.
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Hard to take your comments seriously. But I will give you that conservatives know a lot about invading countries illegally and destroying countries by doing so.
But I digress. How serious is a crime if someone comes to our country to work for peanuts, filling unwanted jobs, and at the same time keeping food prices low? And who is the one committing the crime: the person that crossed an imaginary line, or the people that take advantage of their desperation? Under Christian doctrine, I do know which one is immoral. Do you?
Just pointing out that what most illegals do is not really a major crime, compared to murder, rape, etc.
And while I do benefit from the low wages, I am more than willing to recognize this fact and thank them. I don't benefit from the low wages and then try to demonize these undocumented workers like some.
We are already committed in Afghanistan. You have to finish the job.
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What job are we suppose to finish? Any idea?
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Non-Issue? We have people pouring across the border. It needs to be secured. Should have been years ago.
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People are pouring across...and? Compared to bigger issues does it matter if Juan comes to america to pick fruit for two dollars an hour. He is actually keeping your food costs down. Send him a thank you card, you idiot.
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Leave GITMO open. I do not want the suspected terrorists on our soil.
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Remember when the US was able to hold the moral high ground and work to punish countries that held "suspected" prisoners in secret prisons indefinitely.
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The healthcare they rushed through is going to cost us a fortune and will be filled with corruption and waste. When has the govt. ever run anything that wasn't? They should have taken the time to get it right.
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You mean like the war you blindly support??? Anyway, the last time I check the only insurance provider that keeps cost in check is controlled by the government. Ever heard of Medicare? No need to be a slave to private insurance companies.