LatinaLista –As talk of a cloture vote for the DREAM Act increases on the Hill, some Republicans, who actually have no political will to vote for the bill, are going on record continuing to make disingenuous demands.
For example, one popular thing to say is that they won’t vote for the DREAM Act until the border is secured to prevent illegal immigration.
At this point, pro-immigration activists, Reid and other Democrats are courting a handful of other moderate Republicans, including Sens. George Lemieux (Fla.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas) and Scott Brown (Mass.).
Lemieux told POLITICO on Tuesday that Democrats couldn’t count on his vote until a deal is reached on extending Bush-era tax cuts and the border is secured.
“There are ways to stop illegal immigration,” said Lemieux, who recently toured the Arizona-Mexico border with Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). “If we could do a significant border security measure, then I’d be willing to talk about the situation of these kids who are brought here through no fault of their own. But until we do that, I’m not supportive.”
If Lemieux and his like-minded colleagues are basing their support on a secured border then it’s a safe guess that they will never vote for the DREAM Act because the border is about to be breached beyond what it already has been — and this time, the people won’t be classified as undocumented immigrants but refugees.
According to a New Mexico State University librarian who is keeping tabs on the murders just in Juarez, Mexico, there have already been more than 7,200 murders committed in Juarez alone since January 2008.
We know murders are happening all along the Mexican side of the border as evidenced by mass graves being discovered, police chiefs being assassinated and cities once considered immune from the violence now bastions of shoot-outs, kidnappings and murders.
All this violence is having an effect on the people living in those Mexican towns. How can it not? One entire town fled the violence that had invaded its streets:
More than 300 men, women and children from the colonial ranching town of Ciudad Mier, a 10-minute drive from Texas, have taken refuge in the Lion’s Club in this small city on the Rio Grande — fleeing for their lives from the gangland killers called the Zetas.
…Mier is a border town and many families go back generations here on both sides of the Rio Grande. Even before last week’s attacks, officials estimated half the town’s residents had fled to the United States or elsewhere in Mexico.
This isn’t even the beginning — it’s already begun.
Not being able to count on their own government for their safety and unable to endure the psychological stress of living in a war zone, people are coming to the U.S.
For the most part, it’s an orderly quiet evacuation but unless things dramatically improve along the border, the potential to be anything but orderly is real.
By then, the argument Republicans have rallied around to stall voting on the DREAM Act and Comprehensive Immigration Reform — securing the border — will be a moot point.
The new argument will be the quota for Mexican refugees.
It makes more sense, politically and economically, to pass both immigration reform measures now before a new wave of immigrants arrive who have no vested interest in the USA other than as a safe refuge.
