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Talent brings border security plan to county
Senator says control has become a national security issue
By TERESA RESSEL/Daily Journal Staff Writer

FARMINGTON — Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., is traveling across the state to discuss his bipartisan border security plan.

The St. Francois County Courthouse in Farmington was one of his stops on Wednesday. Talent told a small crowd gathered between the courthouse and the courthouse annex that it is extremely difficult to enter the country legally, but it is easy to come in unlawfully.

Talent said border security isn’t just an immigration issue, it’s a national security issue. He said if the country’s not in control of its border, it’s not in control of its national security.

He said while the United States is a nation of immigrants, it is also a nation of laws.

Talent believes Congress should not give the benefits of citizenship to those who have entered the country unlawfully; and it's especially unfair to put them at the front of the line ahead of those who have waited patiently for years to enter the country lawfully.

“I don’t support amnesty and I voted against the Senate amnesty plan,” Talent said.

He estimates the bill he opposed would have cost taxpayers $54 billion over the next 10 years.

He said it is important the country not allow another amnesty. He said the country needs to secure its borders and fix its immigration system.

“... I believe the Senate should pass a comprehensive border security plan like the ones we’ve proposed to protect our borders and our people,” he said.

That plan Talent is sponsoring with Senators Pete Domenici, R-N.M, and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., includes securing America’s borders with additional manpower, new fences and barriers, and high tech surveillance equipment. The plan also includes criminal penalties for human smuggling, falsifying work/entry documents and drug trafficking.

Specifically, it would increase the number of Customs and Border Protection personnel by 5,000 over five years and increase the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement inspectors by 5,000 over five years. It authorizes $5 billion over five years to acquire new technology, construct roads, fences and barriers, and purchase air assets like helicopters.

State Sen. Kevin Engler, R-Farmington, said he asked Talent to speak about the issue. He said it is something you wouldn’t think would be such a big issue here but it is. He said he has received many calls from people in his district about it.

Engler said the country has to have better policing of its borders. He believes most of his constituents are not in favor of amnesty.

He said it is something that affects Missouri and residents’ tax dollars and it is one of the center issues facing the country right now.

“At the state level, there’s very little I can do,” Engler explained.

The stop for Talent was not just an informational stop, but a campaign stop as Talent said his opponent, Claire McCaskill, is for amnesty and against a border security fence. He said she outlined her pro-amnesty plan in the Columbia Daily Tribune on March 30.

However, McCaskill’s campaign Web Site states that she is against amnesty.

“Eleven to 12 million illegal immigrants currently reside in the United States thanks to (Bush’s) Administration's failure to secure our borders,” she states. “The Bush Administration has refused to enforce the laws we have on the books and clearly did not make border security or immigration reform a priority until an election year.”

She said while building a fence along the border in some of “our most porous areas” is an appropriate first step, “rampant illegal immigration will not be resolved until this Administration stops taking care of special interests who care more about access to cheap-labor than they do about securing borders.”

In the March 30 article, McCaskill was quoted as saying a border fence "is not going to solve the problem," while a proposal making it a felony to be in the country illegally is not "a very practical solution."

The same article states she said priority for legalization should be given to those who return to their own countries and apply legally, but she added, "I think that we need to look at ways that the people who are here illegally can pay for the crime they’ve committed without being a further burden on taxpayers."