Thread: House bill would increase immigration-enforcement spending

U.S. House bill would increase immigration-enforcement spending

By Marcos Restrepo | 05.31.11 | 10:52 am

The U.S. House of Representatives could vote this week on a 2012 Homeland Security Appropriations bill passed last Thursday by the Appropriations Committee that includes expanded spending on immigration enforcement.

The Appropriations Committee members include Florida Republicans Ander Crenshaw, C.W. Bill Young and Mario Diaz-Balart.

According to the National Immigration Forum:

This is the first full-year [Department of Homeland Security] spending bill authored by the new Republican leadership in the House. Overall, the bill continues the Republican’s recent tendency to throw money at enforcing our broken immigration laws, increasing budgets for programs that do nothing to address the policy flaws that underlie our broken system. While there has been a lot of talk this year of the need to cut government spending, the reality in this bill is that the House is ready to spend even more money on programs that have proven controversial while doing nothing to reduce the nation’s undocumented immigrant population and our economy’s dependence on workers who now cannot work legally. #

Homeland Security is the agency in charge of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (aka ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. #

According to the National Immigration Forum, through this House Appropriations Act (.pdf), the Customs and Border Protection will receive $8.77 billion—$44 million more than President Obama asked for in his budget, and more than half a billion dollars more than allocated for 2011. The increase would bring the Border Patrol up to 21,370 agents.

The National Immigration Forum reports that “ICE was allocated $5.5 billion, $25.6 million more than the President requested and $84.8 million more than in 2011.â€

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