May 3, 2007
Ramirez: Chinese steel used in immigration fence

There’s going to be a Made In China sticker on the wall being erected along the United States-Mexico border.

That’s the claim of Andy Ramirez, former California Congressional candidate and chairman of the Friends of the Border Patrol advocacy group. Todd Hartley, of PHXNews.com, a popular headline news site that politically leans right-libertarian, interviewed him as part of his regular Immigration News podcast.

Ramirez tells Hartley that the steel being used by the Army Corps of Engineers to construct the wall is being imported from China. (This is at the 26:50 mark of the 34-minute downloadable podcast. It can also be accessed here.)

“In essence what we have is a national security item utilizing materials purchased from a national interest nation,” Ramirez told Hartley, “and that should be absolutely alarming to everybody listening at home.”

Ramirez goes on to compare this equally to having tracking microchips in Border Patrol badges manufactured in Mexico. He said the materials should be putting Americans to work instead. Ramirez has appeared on several talk shows and testified before Congress.

More correctly, there are walls and fence sections being built. A report on the progress of construction is due in front of Congress on May 17 or earlier. A 700-mile wall, some of which may be fence instead, was approved for construction in the summer of 2006 by the 109th Congress (S.2611). The first 300-mile section to be built is planned to stretch between Calexico and Douglas, Ariz. One of the final acts of Congress was to free up the $2 billion allocated to be used in other ways, including road construction and a possible so called “virtual fence” of infrared and satellite monitoring, advocated by Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi among others.

Earlier legislation, the Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, And Illegal Immigration Control Act Of 2005, had approved the idea of a wall as long as 2,000 miles but it remains stalled in the Senate. This was also referred to as the Sensenbrenner bill.


BY: Temple Stark

http://polstate.com/?p=5116