The Senate approved a bill Friday night that would authorize the construction of a 700-mile wall between the United States and Mexico. President Bush will sign the bill just in time for Republicans to tout it for the November elections.
This move, which includes a $1.2 billion down-payment, is purely political. As the GOP fears losing ground in Congress and in state offices around the country, it needed something tangible to prove that this session of Congress has not been impotent ' though it has passed one of the lowest numbers of legislations in history.
Walling off the southern border has been an idea for years, though many opponents realized, correctly, that a wall is just another way to avoid confronting the problem and its ramifications. Whether immigrants should be allowed into the country, this wall will not be able to stop the influx of illegal immigrants. It will only force them to use more remote and more dangerous means of getting into the United States, including crossing the Rio Grande.
Voters should see through this legislation as a last-ditch attempt to garner more votes, as opposed to real progress.
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Senators playing election-season politics with approval of fence on U.S.-Mexico border
