All You Have to do is Ask
For months now, Presidente Jorge Arbusto’s minion, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, has been busy pushing amnesty for illegal aliens in the US Congress, instead of building the fence that Congress mandated last year.
Now that his pet bill has died, Chertoff says he doesn’t have the tools to enforce the laws:
Chertoff said the administration will continue trying to enforce existing immigration laws, building border fences and beefing up border patrols. But, he said, without the additional resources in the bill and its much more stringent system to verify the legality of job applicants, the flood of illegal immigration is not likely to recede. Employers will still have no real way to unmask undocumented job applicants. Texas ranchers will continue to protest efforts to build fences on their land, and Arizonans will continue to try to block radar towers, he warned.Chertoff angrily dismissed critics, especially conservatives, who said they could not support the bill until the administration shows it can enforce the laws on the books, accusing them of saying, “We need better weapons, but we’ll give you the weapons after you win the war.”
Virtually every enforcement measure in the Bush-Kennedy bill is already authorized or mandated by existing law. If there are any measures the Secretary needs, we will be glad to support them in every way possible, just like we supported passage of the Secure Fence Act through Congress last year.
For starters, the president should call for $4.4 billion in “emergency supplemental” funding from Congress. Arbusto attached the funding request to the Bush-Kennedy bill in the last couple of weeks in order to buy some Republican votes for amnesty. We will be glad to still support $4.4 billion in “emergency” funding, and to make sure that Democrats are held accountable in 2008 - a presidential election year - if they oppose it. All el Presidente has to do is ask.
And surely el Presidente and his henchmen could twist a few Congressional arms to get these new enforcement measures enacted; after all, they were certainly willing to go to the mat for amnesty…
— PoliPundit