Immigration Politics - Texas: Immigration bills will stir passions, but to little effect

This Houston Chronicle piece points out a "catch 22" between the Republican desire to capture and deport more "illegal immigrants" and their goal of cutting the federal budget that will put "everything... on the table." 

Immigration bills will stir passions, but to little effect - Houston Chronicle: "Twenty immigration bills have been prefiled for consideration by the Texas Legislature. An overview reveals that some of the bills have little utility in the larger picture, that a couple are probably unconstitutional and that some have utility but only at the margins. The 20 bills can be grouped into five generic categories.

The first category focuses on finding and identifying illegal aliens for the purpose of arresting them. House Bill 17 echoes Arizona'sSenate Bill 1070, which establishes a process of identification that U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton has found to be unconstitutional. Her ruling is being appealed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

But even if the identification process in SB 1070 and subsequently HB 17 is found constitutional, a much larger problem emerges: Only Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have the constitutional authority to deport illegal immigrants. Last year ICE deported a record-high 393,289 illegal aliens, with about 25 percent of this number coming from Texas. ICE's goal for next year is 404,000.

Texas law enforcement officials could place all of the state's estimated 1.7 million illegal immigrants at ICE's front door, but ICE is a bottleneck that would have only the budgeting and staffing resources to deport some 100,000 — a number extrapolated from Department of Homeland Security statistics.

Will the present Congress allocate huge increases in funding for ICE and for increased border security?

The Republican-controlled House has pledged to roll back spending to 2008 levels. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says, "Everything is going to be on the table." ... Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, Texas, has introduced the CUTS Act to reduce federal spending by $153 billion, underscoring that "there can be no sacred cows" and that the bill is intended to shrink the federal workforce by 10 percent.

If these cuts are imposed on ICE and on border security, fewer illegal immigrants will be deported next year and more will illegally cross the border." Jan. 14, 2011