Truth: The First Casualty of Political Wars Print E-mail
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Friday, 29 February 2008
By Representative David Swinford, Chairman of the House State Affairs Committee

We have clearly entered the campaign silly season. Voters can expect posturing and insincere pandering as one candidate attempts to gain advantage over another. The latest examples are in Waco, Fort Worth and El Paso, where candidates have distorted the legislative record on immigration reform to get to the right of their opponents. People whom I would otherwise respect have engaged in revisionist history as if everything we accomplished on border security and immigration reform during the last legislative session never happened.

Their actions might partly be explained by polls, which tell them that Republican primary voters are deeply troubled about the problems caused by illegal immigration. We all have those feelings. Although border security is primarily the responsibility of the federal government, the Republican leadership of the Texas House has aggressively pursued every option legally possible to address this important issue. We passed a historic funding bill that adds more than $100 million for local and state law enforcement operations to secure common smuggling routes used by drug dealers and for illegal activities. We believe this $100 million will save our taxpayers $1 billion in cost of drug- and illegal alien-related activities. In addition, we increased penalties for employers who hire illegal aliens and stood up to those who advocated the reckless policy of providing them with valid Texas driver's licenses.

Now, just days before the primary, some Republicans have falsely blamed Speaker Tom Craddick for the failure of certain immigration bills that failed to advance out of the committee I lead. The truth is that the demise of those bills was due to legitimate questions about their constitutionality that were raised by Attorney General Greg Abbott and other legal experts. The speaker assigned those bills to our committee, and we made those determinations without his involvement.

Our committee just returned from the border. We held hearings to determine what was being done, how the money was being spent and what progress we were making. We can report that we are winning the war on border security and illegal immigration for the first time in decades. The federal government has sent more border agents and has several hundred being trained to be assigned to our border. We saw our new strike force made up of the Border Patrol, Texas Rangers, Department of Public Safety personnel, park rangers, sheriffs, local police chiefs and the National Guard. Hundreds of new law enforcement personnel are working 24 hours a day to protect our citizens. We are committed to winning the fight on the border so you will not have to have this fight in your hometown. On average, across our 1,200-mile border, we already have reduced crossings by more than 45 percent.

We have much more to do, but our efforts are hindered by candidates who want to use this serious issue for political fodder. We all deserve better than this.
Last Updated ( Friday, 29 February 2008 )
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