While Senator Hatch Releases Stringent Enforcement Legislation House GOP Seek To Cut DHS Border Security Funding

Last week Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, gave a speech at the Heritage Foundation touting the re-introduction of The Strengthening Our Commitment to Legal Immigration and America's Security Act. 

Senator Hatch's legislation would among other thing's deny children of immigrant health care, and is incredibly enforcement heavy. The text of Senator Hatch's speech can be read here. While it is worth reading on the merits of its very passionate defense of the importance of enforcement legislation, the speech is very much out of line with Senator Hatch's past statements on immigration reform.

Some have speculated that ahead of what is looking like a tough re-election, Senator Hatch is trying to recalibrate from an immigration moderate to a Tea Party approved hard liner. While this is certainly a legitimate point, a more interesting split can be seen between Senator Hatch's get tough enforcement rhetoric and the fact that the House GOP are actually proposing cuts to the Department of Homeland Security's budget.

On the House Appropriations Website, the GOP controlled committee released a press release introducing a Continuing Resolution with the largest spending cuts in history.

Those spending cuts include Customs and Border Protection - Border Security Fencing, Infrastructure, and
Technology which was funded at $350 million last year, and would in the GOP cut continuing resolution only receive $124.2 million this year.

There are many more cuts to Border security programs, by all means peruse the full list here.

While Senator Hatch is welcome to demand more be done on enforcement, despite the fact that currently the government is already enforcing federal laws at a historic rate, he should probably have checked with his friends on the House side on their plans for funding enforcement the existing legislation...

It seems counterintuitive to demand more federal enforcement, at a time when members of his own party are proposing cuts to the Department of Homeland Security, the federal entity in charge of enforcing federal immigration laws.

Just a thought...