ARIZONA/MEXICO BORDER -- "We're seeing a lot more babies crossing through here now," Barbara Barnett told me, as we sat on her patio looking out over her and her husband Roger's geologically dramatic, sprawling desert cattle ranch.
U.S. House appropriators are deep in internal discussions over whether to praise (and fund) current enforcement efforts that are proving most effective in arresting illegal aliens and deterring future illegal immigration. Postponement of markup today on a DHS spending bill is probably a good sign.
The House Appropriations Committee has postponed its Wednesday afternoon (June 18) consideration of the DHS spending bill that will determine funding levels for immigration enforcement next year.
We may get an answer over the next week from the high court, which will decide whether to hear the case.
A federal district court and a U.S. Court of Appeals have essentially already refused to take action against states that break the federal law.
ICE Chief Julie Myers goes before a congressional panel Wednesday to answer charges such as that she is allowing "immigrants in detention (to) languish without lawyers and decent medical care even when they are mortally ill," as the New York Times stated in an editorial today (June 3).
With men and women dying in the armed services of our country every day, the question of national community loomed large for me this Memorial Day.
Did all those who died in foreign lands this last year, as well as in America near our own borders, accept the possibility of the supreme sacrifice for just some vague concept of a country? For virtually open borders? For a government that only some times puts its citizens' interests ahead of those of citizens of other countries?
At first blush, I'm sure some will find the news of big California ag firms expanding operations in Mexico to be a negative reaction to increased enforcement against illegal immigration.
Look deeper, however, and this is yet more proof that a constant and escalating enforcement will create an attrition in the illegal population in the U.S. -- and will allow agricultural capitalism to begin to work properly without the distortion of an amnesty.