President George W. Bush is moving to an item on his agenda that he has tried to deal with before but postponed due to opposition within the Republican Party itself: the thorny issue of immigration reform. The Washington Post reports:
President Bush promoted his administration’s efforts to get a grip on illegal immigration, spotlighting a plan to tighten security along the southern border and calling for a guest-worker program that would allow about 11 million illegal immigrants to work legally in the country temporarily before forcing them to return home.
Speaking Monday at an Air Force base here about one hour north of the Mexican border, Bush put his rhetorical emphasis on measures sought by many Republicans fearful of swelling illegal immigration: stronger border enforcement with high-tech detection systems, larger centers to detain those captured, swifter proceedings to deport them and increased policing of illegal immigrants in the interior.
“Those who enter the country illegally violate the law,” Bush said. “The American people should not have to choose between being a welcoming society and a lawful society. We can have both at the same time.”
But the president faces an uphill battle in the House and Senate to realize his vision of reform, which is drawing intense skepticism from many allies in his own party who believe his approach is not tough enough. In the coming weeks, the White House must persuade lawmakers to forge together several immigration bills, differing widely in scope, into a single policy.
Bush’s call for Congress to enact a temporary-worker program is especially contentious within the GOP. The president’s proposal would allow foreign workers to enter the country for a fixed period — most likely three years — to fill jobs that go unwanted by Americans, but some Republicans reject that as too close to amnesty for illegal immigrants. The workers would be given a “tamperproof” identification card, and would be required to leave the country once their term in the country expires.
This idea is already drawing thumbs-down reviews from some conservative quarters, such as the lively GOP-oriented site Red State.org where California Yankee writes:
Instead of choosing sides, the President left the details of the temporary worker program to be fleshed out by Congress. He left us with a promise. He promised not to sign an immigration bill that includes an amnesty. But that is an empty promise because President Bush thinks that if illegal aliens are required to pay a fine they should then be allowed to participate in his temporary worker program. The President believes that is not an amnesty. Allowing illegal aliens to buy their way into a temporary worker program by paying a fine and not requiring them to return to their homeland before being eligible to participate is rewarding their illegal conduct and it is an amnesty.
I’m disappointed. The President, as he did when he nominated Miers for the Supreme Court, missed an opportunity to rally the troops and unite his base.
Indeed, the Bush plan does seem to be an attempt to do verbal gymnastics to avoid the use of the word “amnesty.” An amnesty for illegal aliens was offered under the administration of President Ronald Reagan (Note: I covered stories on that amnesty as a reporter for the San Diego Union since I then had the immigration reform beat). Reagan officials insisted it was a one-time amnesty and that it would be vigorously enforced (in the end it wasn’t). The New York Times, in a short piece about a limited survey on this issue, concluded:
Some of the most vocal critics of illegal immigration called Mr. Bush’s proposals for stricter enforcement measures too little, too late, while leading immigration advocates used almost the same words to dismiss them as an empty public relations gesture.
But in hotspots of local friction over the issue, others said the country might finally confront a complicated problem.
Carl Braun, an executive recruiter in San Diego and leader of the Minuteman Corps of California, whose 800 volunteer members patrol the border with Mexico, said the president was responding to demands from within the Republican Party in places like California. Mr. Bush did nothing, Mr. Braun said, until groups like his “screamed so loudly” that they were heard by the Republicans.
“The president has no choice but to act now,” he said. “But this should have been done in the first place.”
From opposite ends of the spectrum, Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which has supported amnesty for illegal immigrants, and Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates restricting immigration, said Mr. Bush’s speech was more spin than substance.
“Instead of leading the country to bipartisan comprehensive reform,” Mr. Sharry said, “he runs more of a danger of putting gasoline on the fire.”
The Washington correspondent for Great Britain’s The Guardian adds:
The attempt to seal the frontier is being couched in terms of national security. It comes a month after President Bush signed a $32bn (£19bn) homeland security bill, which included big increases for border protection, including 1,000 new patrol agents. The crackdown was intended as a counterweight to a year-old Bush initiative to grant guest-worker status to the more than 10 million illegal immigrants in the country. That proposal has stalled in the face of conservative opposition.
“Bush decided to give these guys their rhetorical pound of flesh,” a Republican official close to the White House told Time magazine. “In return, he wants a comprehensive bill, which is what he has always wanted. He’s just going to lead with a lot of noise about border security.”
And Bloomberg gives these facts about how the issue plays in terms of dynamics within the Republican party:
Border control is a major political issue, especially in the southwest where drug smuggling and violence by illegal immigrants prompted governors in Arizona and New Mexico to declare states of emergency on their borders. Bush will address the issue of border security again tomorrow in El Paso, Texas.
Bush is “feeling pressure to address it from the right wing of the party” because “it could swing some congressional elections in border states,” said Jacob L. Vigdor, assistant professor of public policy at Duke University.
The Republican split on immigration pits business interests such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who want a guest-worker program to fill jobs in restaurants, hotels or farm fields against Republicans in Congress such as Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo, chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus, who opposes any program to increase immigration and says the U.S. isn’t enforcing laws on the books.
Tancredo, immediately after Bush’s speech, issued a statement applauding Bush’s focus on border security and saying: “As with all politicians who change their rhetoric and their policies under political pressure, the public must continue to push the administration to follow up on its words.”
Bush, in his speech, pledged to speed the process of deporting people caught illegally crossing the border, end the release of illegal immigrants who awaiting court dates and increase the use of technology for border surveillance.
It’s a classic pincer movement: Bush wants to placate Congressional Republicans who want more of a clampdown and the business interests who basically want illegal immigrants to be left alone as much as possible. Plus, there has been a big push in recent years by the GOP to try and capture more Hispanic votes. But Bush will likely irk someone no matter HOW he moves on this issue.
The text of Bush’s speech can be read here.
UPDATE:
— Michelle Malkin is unimpressed. She offers some links and some “live blogging” such as:
04:57pm. Surprise, surprise! Bush pays lip service to employer sanctions and interior enforcement. Finally mentions problem of MS-13 illegal alien gang violence. Pays lip service to document fraud, without mentioning his administration’s own reticence over matricula consular cards for illegal aliens from Mexico and other countries.
05:01pm. Here we go. Temporary worker platitudes. They do the jobs “Americans will not do.” Tepid, tepid applause.
–On the other end of the political spectrum, Oliver Willis is not pleased, either:”Now, I’m against “guest workerâ€? programs myself, and I think we ought to have secure borders – including our northern border, the one the GOP doesn’t seem to care about – but the Republican’s immigration jones is nothing more than a sop to the racist base of the Republican party…I see 2008 in the GOP being a race to prove who hates the brown-skinned folks the most.”
UPDATE II: Video of speech via The Political Teen.
SOME OTHER VOICES ON THIS ISSUE:
—Glenn Reynolds has some links, nothing that the plan is getting “bad reviews.)
—Booker Rising’s Shay:
President Bush’s proposal sounds like the same amnesty-in-disguise proposal that he has been floating for some time. It takes black folks centuries to get citizenship, and yet illegal immigrants can just pay a fine and then enter the guest worker program (and thus are rewarded for their illegal behavior)? A program that will further hamper black employment, and the illegal demographic invasion of many black communities and services in our communities? Plus undemrine national security? Ain’t right. If it was 11 million black folks who were illegal immigrants in this country then our borders would be on lockdown. There would be a lockdown on both supply through tighter borders and on demand through stiff fines to businesses who break the laws and hire illegal immigrants.
—Common Sense America:”Our President would have us believe that he will entice 11 million illegal immigrants to sign up for temporary worker cards that will allow them to work in this country legally for 3 years but then require them to leave this country when their temporary card expires. Common sense tells us that this isn’t going to happen and even though I love President Bush, if he believes this crap about the guest-worker program that is coming out of his mouth, he is delusional.”
—The Heretik:”AMIDST A HOST OF PROBLEMS at home and abroad, Bush starts the push refinish his image. A key issue Bush advisors feel he can work to get more favorable play is on immigration issues, an area always divisive in times of economic flux. Illegal immigrants (bad) will be caught, cheap guest workers will be encouraged (good) So the sales pitch begins.”
–A BIG DEBATE at PrawfsBlawg that can be read in three posts: here, here and here.
—The Mechanical Eye has a great, blunt post that must be read in full. A small part:
Illegal immigration is a crime, they say. Enforce our borders! But how malicious a crime is it for said “criminal” to cross a harsh desert landscape in order to work because there’s a large, bloated bureacracy that literally takes years, if at all, to let you in? It may be illegal but it doesn’t exactly make my blood boil with patriotic rage to see workers streaming from Mexico because Americans are hiring them. Or, as Dennis Prager put it, it may be illegal, but its not immoral – Mexico has a famously corrupt government that doesn’t give its citizens a fair break, and the Northern Colossus looks mighty tempting if you’re a worker with any rational thought….Like it or not, most illegal immigrants are here to stay. The question is how to assimilate them into America.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.