Monday, July 15, 2013

What the Immigration Bill Overlooks

The bill, whose fate in the House is uncertain, would appropriate $40 billion over the next decade to “secure the border.” This would entail hiring 20,000 more border patrol agents and building 700 more miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexican border. The spending would include $4.5 billion on technology for surveillance. As the Washington Post reported, “The border security plan … includes unusual language mandating the purchase of specific models of helicopters and radar equipment for deployment along the U.S.-Mexican border, providing a potential windfall worth tens of millions of dollars to top defense contractors.”
The bill would also set up a procedure under which the 11 million human beings who are in the United States without government permission could become citizens in 13 years. To come “out of the shadows,” so-called illegal immigrants would have to pay fines and taxes. The New York Times notes that the “tough border security provisions … must be in place before the immigrants can gain legal status.”

http://reason.com/archives/2013/07/14/what-the-immigrant-bill-overlooks

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