S P O N S O R E D B Y :
Bush Signs Border-Fence and FEMA-Overhaul Bill
By The Associated Press
October 05, 2006
President
Bush on
Wednesday signed a homeland-security bill that includes an overhaul of the Federal
Emergency Management Agency and $1.2 billion for fencing along
the U.S.-Mexican border to stem undocumented immigration.
Standing
before a mountainous backdrop in Arizona, a
state that has been the center of much debate over secure borders, Bush signed
into law a $35-billion homeland-security spending bill that could bring hundreds
of miles of fencing to the busiest undocumented-entry point on the U.S.-Mexican
border.
Bush
said enforcement alone will not stop undocumented immigration, and he urged
Congress to pass his guest-worker program to legally bring in new foreign
workers and give some of the country's estimated 12 million undocumented
immigrants a shot at U.S.
citizenship.
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"The
funds that Congress has appropriated are critical for our efforts to secure this
border and enforce our laws, yet we must also recognize that enforcement alone
is not going to work," Bush said at the bill-signing ceremony tucked into his
three-day campaign-fundraising trip to the West. "We need comprehensive reform
that provides a legal way for people to work here on a temporary
basis."
Among
other things, Bush said the homeland-security-funding bill deploys
nuclear-detection equipment to points of entry, raises safety security standards
at chemical plants, provides better tools to enforce immigration laws and
provides vehicle barriers, lighting and infrared cameras to help catch
undocumented immigrants trying to cross the border.
Outgoing Mexican
President Vicente
Fox, who has spent his six-year term
lobbying for a new guest-worker program and an amnesty program for the millions
of Mexicans working without documentation in the
United
States, has called the barrier
"shameful." He compares it to the Berlin Wall.
Some
Democrats criticized the homeland-security spending bill as too
meager.
Rep.
Ed Markey, D-Mass., a senior member of the House Homeland
Security Committee, said the bill does not improve screening
of cargo carried on passenger planes, does not provide money to buy and install
advanced explosive-detection equipment and does not include strong enough
security requirements to protect against a terrorist attack on chemical
plants.
"There
are nightclubs in New
York City that
are harder to get into than some of our chemical plants," Markey said.
(AP)
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