[gwbiny2k]

My knee-jerk reaction was...what a terrible proposal by Bush!
But thinking further, here are my thoughts:
We have had illegals coming here for 50 years.
No one has been able or willing to stop this flow.
Why? Because the illegals are definitely filling a need
for cheap manual labor. The employers want them, the
consumers want them. Yet we have no way to find out
their current address without spending Billions.
None of the 911 hijackers entered illegally. None of them
did cheap manual labor. They were financed by others.
So does it make sense to SEPARATE the legitimate workers from the
others by issuing work-permits and thus have them on record?
The work-permits can be cross-checked with employers and
payroll records. The other aliens legal or illegal then
become a much smaller pool to track.
By the way, I had some landscaping work done by a Mexican
(I did not check for his immigration documents) who did the
job for $2000 versus the lowest competing bid of $4500 which
I could not afford.

[Centennial]

Good point. The Dept of Labor says that there are 210,000 people employed in stoop labor (picking vegetables ect.) nation wide. I assume not all are illegals. That means that the rest of the 8 to 12 million illegals are engaged in other jobs that Americans compete with them to get. That has the effect of driving down wages and keeping them low. It is as simple as supply and demand. Perhaps you would have been able to pay more for the landscape work if you were earning more money. By that I mean that the effect of 12 million illegals drives down the wages of all of us in an economy that is as interconnected as ours is.

[paul51]

At first I also thought it was boneheaded. Considering there are 10 - 12 million illegals roaming around the country, we need some strategy to begin getting a handle on the problem. Throw them all out sounds good to me too but I know it's impossible. Next best thing is to devise a policy to identify them and then we are in a better position. Beats talking about it while nothing gets done.

[Consort]

If 500 thousand illegals come in this, then decrease next year's legal quota by 500 thousand. Do that every year and the quotas will be met and not exceeded. It's an interim measure while they find a solution.

[PresbyRev]

I served a rural parish in WV from '01-'03. W. Virginians vied for the jobs with the fed/state/county gov. If that couldn't be had, especially for those not college educated, the chicken plant was the goal. Native West Virginians, black and white, wanted jobs at the chicken processing plant - no ifs, ands or buts. It was maybe $8/hr. with some barebones benefits.

There were virtually no hispanics in the area in '01 excepting for seasonal migrants working apple orchards in the Mtns. and the VA Shenandoah Valley. By '02 the plant began advertising in Spanish in the regional papers and actively bringing in illegal hispanics, setting them up in trailer parks and paying them under the table. All the while letting natives (i.e. - U.S. Citizens who wanted the same jobs) hit the unemployment line. They even began placing illegals in oversight positions over citizens with seniority, demoting legal workers.

The line that the illegals are only doing jobs no U.S. Citizen would do is bunk. Bringing the Third World to the U.S. is forcing everyone to compete right down to the bottom of the wage bucket.

I have more sense than to vote for Bush simply because he has an "R" next to his name. He is betraying our borders, our Constitution and our way of life.