Fox News Still Pushing for Troops on Border
Reported by Judy - May 17, 2006
Fox News' "Dayside" on Wednesday (May 17, 2006) continued to misrepresent the problems of illegal immigration as a problem that could be solved by putting military troops on the border with Mexico rather than other approaches.
"Dayside" co-hosts Juliet Huddy and Mike Jerrick let Colorado Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo attack illegal immigrants for allegedly jumping in front of legal immigrants. He says allowing people here illegally to earn citizenships would "send a horrible message to every single person who has done it the right way. If you’ve waited out there for years and you’ve gone through the process and paid for lawyers and done everything you’re supposed to do to come into America and you finally make it, what message does it send you that all you would have to do really is to sneak into the country, hang out for awhile, and you’re going to get all the same benefits? It’s terrible public policy, it should never be connected to any kind of border security idea.”
Unfortunately, that's not how many illegal immigrants get here. One of the problems that Fox News rarely mentions with regard to illegal immigration is that many of these people came to this country legally and overstayed their visas. They are here illegally now, even though they never took the stereotypical trip through the desert that shows up in the same video day after day on Fox.
One reason they are here illegally now is the backlog within the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, now the Department of Homeland Security, which can mean years of waiting to get your papers processed..
According to this report from the Pew Hispanic Center, the number of "green cards" granted to legal immigrants fluctuates wildly from year to year due to "resource allocation" decisions by the INS/DHS. In other words, there is not enough staff to process the applications from immigrants, resulting in backlogs. People get tired of waiting, and rather than leaving, decide to stay here illegally.
Seems to me that instead of deploying troops on the border, the government could add some more agents to process legalization requests so people who have waited years for an answer don't get tired of waitilng and come across the border illegally or so that those who came legally and overstayed can have their situation straightened out.
