The Daily Background

Thank you, Matt. What most people don’t realize (due to piss-poor reporting and misleading media presentation), is that The “Secure Fences Act” does not in fact provide for a fence to be built, order a fence to be built, allocate specific funds for a fence to be built, or even suggest that a fence be built.

The “Secure Fence Act” was, from the very beginning, merely an election-year trick to try and get Republican base voters fired up about voting in the midterm elections and make them think that Republicans are trying to curb illegal immigration by building a fence. Which is not true. And unfortunately, misleading, simplified, and uncritical media coverage of the issue have led people to believe exactly what the Republicans want people to believe: that the Republican party is serious about curbing illegal immigration and that they’re going to build a gigantic fence to stop it.

The Washington Post provided some excellent reporting on the issue earlier this month when the sham bill passed through Republican-controlled Congress.

No sooner did Congress authorize construction of a 700-mile fence on the U.S.-Mexico border last week than lawmakers rushed to approve separate legislation that ensures it will never be built, at least not as advertised, according to Republican lawmakers and immigration experts.

GOP leaders have singled out the fence as one of the primary accomplishments of the recently completed session. Many lawmakers plan to highlight their $1.2 billion down payment on its construction as they campaign in the weeks before the midterm elections.

In short, the bill merely “authorizes” a fence– in other words it says that a fence can be built, leaving the option of whether or not to, where to, how much money to spend on, and so forth up to other people.

The Post continued, citing “loopholes” in the legislation which “leave the Bush administration with authority to decide where, when and how long a fence will be built, except for small stretches east of San Diego and in western Arizona. Homeland Security officials have proposed a fence half as long, lawmakers said.”

Perhaps more telling is that while most Americans assume this bill (misleadingly titled the “Secure Fences Act”) will obviously create a 700-mile fence on the border between Mexico, according to the Post, the Department of Homeland Security refuses to say that it will do that.

Much of the media reporting on this issue has unfortunately presented this in such a way where they are not saying a bold-faced lie per-say, but more framing it in the exact terms that the Republicans want: that the bill will create a gigantic 700-mile fence and somehow magically secure America.

It will in fact do neither. Most news outlets, including those who set the tone for other coverage (the NYT and AP for instance) have really dropped the ball on this one, and are basically reading like press releases from the White House, with a bit of weak dissent sprinkled in for good measure. Here’s the Washington Post article I referred to, which goes under two titles- “In border fence’s path, legislative roadblock” and the more succinct “Border fence unlikely to be built.”

Filed under: News Media, Immigration, Z-TDB Blog