McCain: 'Border Surge' Amendment to Immigration Bill Was Just for Show

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said Tuesday that if the House goes to conference to try to save the Senate “Gang of Eight” immigration bill, the “border surge” amendment from Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and John Hoeven (R-ND) will probably be eliminated.

“We don’t need 20,000 additional border patrol agents,” McCain claimed at an AFL-CIO immigration forum on Tuesday, according to Politico. “But what we do need is use of technology that has been developed where we can survey the border more effectively.”

The Corker-Hoeven amendment was introduced in the last minute of the Senate immigration fight, right before the Fourth of July. It was sold with a series of talking points that mostly turned out to be untrue and used to secure an additional group of GOP senate votes. It was rushed to the floor as a substitute 1,200-page new bill by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and passed before everything in it was fully understood. 

The revised bill still kept the fundamental flaws the original bill had, as it did not require strengthening law enforcement–border security and interior immigration law enforcement–before granting amnesty. Instead, the bill tried to stifle border security concerns through promises of money, technology, and more law enforcement agents to be hired at a future date.

McCain admitted as much in his Tuesday remarks at the AFL-CIO event. “I voted for it so friends of mine would be comfortable that we are securing the border,” he said. “But the real securing of the border is with technology, as opposed to individuals.”

A GOP aide said McCain’s comments confirm what conservatives have suspected all along: “Everyone knew the agents would never be hired. But we suspected a little time would pass before they admitted as much to the world,” the aide told Breitbart News. 

“This just reveals what a sham this whole thing is. An excuse to pass amnesty and give CEO’s some unskilled labor from overseas,” the source claimed. “This just pulls back the curtain a little more.”