Passing Along Some Vital Information on Illegal Immigration

I received this email from Numbers USA over the weekend.

Without explanation, Congress has stripped away $3 billion in desperately needed funds to build the Border Fence that it approved last year and to provide for other border security.

That's right—without telling the public, Congress is pulling the plug on the U.S.-Mexico Border Fence that it voted for with such enthusiasm last year (just before they asked voters to re-elect them).

Help us turn this petition into a national overnight phenomenon. Time is critical—Congress will finalize this funding question before Christmas!

Now, it is important to emphasize again, as Numbers points out, that the fence and its funding was voted on late in the session in 2006. At last check, about eleven miles out of thousands had actually been built.

The fence has become a sort of cause celebe for opponents of tough measures against illegal immigration. Their rallying cry comes in this statement from Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona.

You show me a 50-foot wall and I'll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border. That's the way the border works

That sort of statement is what I refer to as a strawman arguement. No one is claiming that the border fence will keep out everyone that tries to come in. It will however keep out a lot of them, and that is the point of anti illegal immigration legislation. Everytime I hear this statement, I always point out that a Mexican migrant is going to look awfully funny walking around the desert with a fifty one foot ladder. There is no one hundred percent full proof way of keeping illegals out. If we put together a human wall, someone might ride in in a tank. That doesn't mean that methods aren't effective even if some smart person has figured out a way to theoretically get around them.

The border fence near San Diego is proof that the fence works.

Before the fence was built, all that separated that stretch of Mexico from California was a single strand of cable that demarcated the international border.

Back then, Border Patrol agent Jim Henry says he was overwhelmed by the stream of immigrants who crossed into the United States illegally just in that sector.

"It was an area that was out of control," Henry says. "There were over 100,000 aliens crossing through this area a year."

Today, Henry is assistant chief of the Border Patrol's San Diego sector. He says apprehensions here are down 95 percent, from 100,000 a year to 5,000 a year, largely because the single strand of cable marking the border was replaced by double -- and in some places, triple -- fencing.

Both houses of Congress voted on and approved this fence and the President signed it. If laws aren't followed through on, then our government is nothing more than a banana republic. This is unacceptable and I hope everyone rises up and demands that Congress follow through on what they started.