Sen. Boxer To Halt Immigration Enforcement

In a shameless effort to gain additional Congressional seats, California Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer has attached an amendment to a spending bill that will block federal immigration enforcement until after the 2010 census.

The idea is to count all illegal immigrants in the next official U.S. Census, which will more than likely give states with large illegal alien populations such as California, Arizona, Texas and Florida additional seats in the House of Representatives after 2010.

Although they cannot vote, illegal immigrants are included in the census and legislators in states with large undocumented populations say aggressive immigration enforcement will prevent those living in the U.S. illegally from being counted.

To keep federal agents from enforcing the country’s immigration laws, Senator Boxer actually attached an amendment to an existing appropriations bill (HR 3093) for the departments of Commerce and Justice.

A fixture in the U.S. Senate since 1993, Boxer’s amendment specifically calls on the Customs and Enforcement Bureau of the Department of Homeland Security to limit aggressive enforcement of federal immigration laws to promote full participation of non citizens in the census.

The amendment points out that during the census counts of 1980, 1990 and 2000 federal immigration officials agreed to limit immigration enforcement efforts to encourage the participation of all persons in the United States.

However, Boxer’s amendment goes on to say that Homeland Security officials have publicly stated that they will not even consider scaling back efforts to aggressively enforce federal immigration laws during the 2010 census. Therefore she felt it necessary to sneak the amendment into an unrelated spending bill.

Boxer is no stranger to controversy. This year alone she was exposed for accepting illegal campaign contributions from a Pakistani fugitive on the FBI’s most wanted list, unethically using her position as chair of a powerful Senate committee to raise money for her reelection campaign and introducing legislation to put 1.5 million illegal immigrant farm workers and their relatives on a path to United States citizenship by granting them immediate legal residency.