September 11, 2006
After spending the summer holding public meetings around the country on the need for immigration enforcement, Republicans in the House of Representatives are now under pressure to show some results. That pressure is behind House Republican leader Dennis Hastert’s announcement last week that the House GOP will attempt to add immigration enforcement measures to one of several appropriations bills that Congress has to pass before the October recess. Appropriations bills are necessary to fund government operations and are therefore difficult to vote against. The measures mentioned by the House Republicans reveal how fruitless the House’s summer hearings have been: adding Border Patrol agents, adding fencing and surveillance at the border, and granting greater state authority to enforce immigration are all measures that are part of the Senate bill against which the House spent the summer condemning.
