Snow promises immigration plan builds fence

Snow promises immigration plan builds fence
'President does support it because he thinks it's good for security'

The immigration proposal pending before Congress will build a national border barrier fence that U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., has advocated, White House spokesman Tony Snow has promised. He also confirmed to WND that the bill allows troublemakers to be ejected by the United States.

The assurances came in response to a question from Les Kinsolving, WND's correspondent at the White House.

"In regard to what a Washington Post editorial hailed as a breakthrough on immigration, which the president supports, the chairman of the Republican Party in Texas, Tina Benkiser, said this: 'It will be yet another colossal failure in dealing with the massive invasion of our country. It accomplishes nothing more than to compromise the security of the American people.' And my question: Does the president believe this Texas Republican leader doesn't know what she's talking about?" Kinsolving asked.

"Let me tell you what the president believes about the legislation, rather than trying to pick a personal fight, which is always more tangy, but less useful from my standpoint," Snow said.

Snow promised not only will the immigration proposal build border fencing and provide for unmanned aerial vehicles to monitor other parts of the border between the U.S. and Mexico, it dedicates more to border security than ever in U.S. history.

"The legislation actually commits more resources to border safety and security than has ever been committed in the history of the United States, and far more than was originally contemplated by Republicans as recently as a year ago," Snow said. "The president is keenly aware of concern about border security, which is why, before the program can even proceed to the next step, it requires having 370 miles of fence built, 200 miles of vehicular barriers, and the ability to have electronic surveillance over more than a thousand miles – UAVs, radars – and also the ability to respond quickly."

His defense of the plan continued, with assurances that the administration, which has "taken steps to beef up the presence on the border" already has reduced the number of illegals crossing the border.

"We certainly understand the concern of many Republicans and Democrats about border security and think we have done a good job on it," he said. "And it's important to note also that in many cases, people have had reactions based on somebody else's paraphrase of the legislation, rather than a thorough and careful reading, which is why we invite people to take a look at it, because when they do, they are going to see that there is a serious commitment here."

He called Duncan Hunter's concerns about a border fence a classic example. "Hunter thinks that only half of the fence that was proposed in a bill that he wrote is going to be built. No, all of it is going to be built. But the fact is, you can't move on to the next phase, the temporary worker program, until you've got 370 miles built. That's more than 200 miles getting constructed in the nest 18 months."

"So the point here is when you talk about invasions, when you talk about sort of a number of those characterizations, you have to keep in mind what the president has proposed. This is not the bill [that] was laid out before Congress last year. It is serious, it is substantive, and the president does support it because he thinks it's good for security and also because he believes – and I think the chairman of the Texas Republican Party would probably agree – it's important to know who is here illegally.

"This bill gives us the capacity to do that for the first time. It gives us the capacity to make sure whether people are working or not. It also allows those who are involved in legal work, in law enforcement, to be able to narrow down the focus not to 11 million people, but to those who really do present a clear and present threat, or a conceivable threat to American safety, so that we can go ahead and deal with those sorts of problems and get the people out of the country," Snow said.

The proposal in Congress, which probably will be handled after the Memorial Day holiday, is backed by Bush and a bipartisan group of lawmakers. It is a compromise that is written to attract open-immigration advocates because it would allow 12 million illegal aliens to remain in the U.S. and award them with a path toward citizenship.

It also gives visa priority to aliens with special skills over those who simply want to remain in the U.S. with their families. And it tightens controls over the U.S. border.

Opponents say it's nothing more or less than amnesty.

Kinsolving asked a second question that also involved border security.

"Tucson's Arizona Star reports that the governors of Arizona and New Mexico have written the president, protesting the state Department's recruiting 120 Border Patrol agents for $134,000 a year, to send to Iraq, which the governors say makes no sense because we should be focusing on supporting our nation's security efforts along the Mexican and Canadian borders. And my question: Why is the president allowing the State Department to do this?" he asked.

Snow said that it is not "inconsistent" to be sending workers to Iraq while at the same time sending more officers to cover the U.S. border.

"What we're talking about is 18,000 people on the border," Snow said. "That is twice the size of the Border Patrol inherited by the president."

When it was pointed that that those officers are not on duty yet, Snow responded, "They are building them up at a speed that is unprecedented in American history."