House Republicans have dug in their heels against comprehensive immigration reform and the bipartisan compromise it would necessitate, instead pursuing single-issue, conservative bills. Advocates will be trying to convince them otherwise during this August's Congressional recess. Senator John McCain signaled on Tuesday that he's open to further compromise with the House on some parts of the comprehensive Senate bill he helped author, and named one area in particular: the "border surge" amendment, a last-minute addition designed to get more conservatives on board and which would allocate an extra $46 billion over 10 years toward monitoring the border and apprehending would-be crossers.
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Shortly after that amendment was tacked on the bill, McCain said it would make the border "the most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall". It called for an additional 350 miles of border fences designed specifically to discourage humans, $3.2 billion of high-powered surveillance and detection technologies (including drone aircrafts) and the addition of another 20,000 Border Patrol officers along the U.S.-Mexico border. But on Tuesday, the Arizona senator said the extra Border Patrol officers weren't necessary.
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"We don't need 20,000 additional Border Patrol agents," he said during an immigration forum hosted by the AFL-CIO. "But what we do need is use of technology that has been developed where we can survey the border more effectively.
"I voted for it so friends of mine would be comfortable that we are securing the border," McCain added. "But the real securing of the border is with technology, as opposed to individuals."
The "border surge", authored by Republican Senators Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota, has not been without its detractors. Over 30 Latino and immigrant-advocate organizations wrote to Congress last week, asking House legislators to oppose the Senate's bill because of its call for increased "border militarization". Texas Rep. Filemon Vega (D-Texas) has resigned from the Hispanic caucus over it, and some migration analysts believe it will lead to more deaths among those migrants who do try to cross illegally.
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McCain was firmer on another, perhaps most central tenet of the Senate bill: that which would give legal status and a pathway to citizenship to the nation's undocumented immigrants. The senator called that tenet, which has been met with opposition from House Republicans, a "fundamental element" of the bill.
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