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By Marion Edwyn Harrison, Esq.
December 07, 2006
As discussed in the Notable News Now column posted October 4, 2006, Congress enacted, and President George W. Bush signed, the Secure Fence Act of 2006 (“Act”), designed to authorize erection of a fence along portions of the Mexican Border to assist our American Border Patrol and various State and local law-enforcement forces in reducing the quantity of unlawful immigration.
Look, if you would, at the penultimate paragraph in the following column and the find the rub. The 109th Congress appears about to adjourn without having appropriated the money to implement the Act. If the 109th Congress were to fail to appropriate that money would the 110th Congress do so?
There doubtless are a few optimists who believe that a successor Congress - for reasons of clarity, consistency or otherwise - ought to appropriate money to fund an existing statute unless the successor Congress is to repeal the statute, which, of course, a successor Congress has the right to attempt to do. However, upon more than one occasion in history a successor Congress has declined to fund, or fully to fund, a law enacted by a prior Congress.
The Democratic Leadership of the incoming Congress has not publicly clarified its position as to funding of the Act. However, statisticians, pollsters and other analysts of the November 7, 2006 Congressional elections which produced Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress report that the percentage of Hispanic or Latino voters voting Democratic rose substantially. These voters, of course, presumably with statistically few exceptions, are lawful immigrants. However, many of them favor massive further Hispanic or Latino immigration into this country. Apparently nobody has attempted to quantify just how many so favor. Nevertheless, the thinking of the 110th Congress Leadership may be that less effort should be made to prevent or even to discourage unlawful immigrants from crossing the Mexican Border.
A 110th Congress failure to fund the Act would prove that the 109th Congress erred in not funding it. We imminently shall know the full measure of 109th Congress activity. If it fails to fund we may not know to a certainty that funding is dead, the Act effectively nullified, until very near the November 2008 Presidential and Congressional Elections. However, it cannot be gainsaid but that the 109th Congress should do it - and should have done it before now.
“Don’t Fence Me In . . .” Must Not Apply to Illegals
December 07, 2006
Marion Edwyn Harrison is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation.
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