I've written before that House Democrats seem headed for a painful immigration debate that exposes the fault lines between the moderates elected in 2006 -- who want to protect their seats by passing legislation to get tough on illegal immigration -- and the lliberals and latinos who favor 'earned legalization.' Well, it looks like the depth of the split is already on display in the subcommittee that funds immigration enforcement:
...House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman David Price, D-N.C., and ranking member Harold Rogers, R-Ky., said ICE faces difficulty identifying all illegal immigrants among the millions of people held in about 5,000 federal, state and local jails across the country. Price said the jails hold about 600,000 criminal illegal immigrants but at its current pace ICE will take up to five years to deport them all...
"It's not acceptable to have people who we know are capable and willing to harm our citizens ... to be back out on the street," he said...
Tensions mounted during the hearing when some Democrats questioned how ICE conducts work-site raids and how the agency handles children and people who need medical care. Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif., accused ICE of acting like Nazi Germany's Gestapo when conducting raids. Myers defended ICE employees, saying she would not tolerate the accusation. "We are not the Gestapo," she said, interrupting Farr...
Congratulations Sam Farr, on being the first to prove Godwin's Law. But perhaps you ought to direct your anger at Chairman Price, who seems eager to see ICE get tougher on the illegal immigrants who are the target of worksite enforcement. Your message might get a more receptive hearing if the man who funds ICE wasn't sending the opposite signal.
Chairman Price offers an instructive lesson of how strong the feeling is about illegal immigration right now. He represents the research triangle of North Carolina, and taught at Duke. He has a career 'F' grade from the anti-illegal immigration group Numbers USA, and does equally poorly on the FAIR scorecard. But in the current political climate, even he wants to be seen as doing more to fight illegal immigration.
This incident presages what will likely be a nasty and unavoidable fight within the party later this year.
