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Thankyou for input yesterday on Bush and the immigrant issue. I read what you said and then found the text of the speech. I will go thru it with a fine tooth comb.

I will say one thing, In the 60's we lived on a vegetable farm, tomatoes, corn, cabbage, cucumbers etc. Every year the owners of the farm had workers come in from Puerto Rico. They would stay for the whole growing and harvest season. We lived in the farm house and they stayed right in the back in what resembled an old army barracks. At the end they returned to Puerto Rico with money in their pocket and happy for it. Each year alot of the same guys came back.

They were a great bunch of guys, never had any problems. They taught me every swear word in spanish and that's where I learned how to drive a tractor and the farm car an old Dodge, I was a young teen.
If this is on the line of what Bush is talking about I am all for it. What I am against is a blanket plan that would make it legal for all 8 million illegals to stay here like the demonrats would like.

Hi, Rus!

It's amazing how fast kids pick up a new language!
I played with the Mexican kids, and I could speak Spanish as well as they did by the time I was eight.
The kids who came with their parents to pull cotton stayed about three months, and by the time they left they could speak English better than most immigrant workers today who have been here for years.

One thing that has been bandied about on the forum is the immigrant workers taking work away from Americans.
It's been said many times that if the pay scale were high enough Americans would do any work.
I'm sure that's true. If someone would pay me $50. an hour to collect garbage, I'd change occupations.
The fact is that it would be a short term employment.
When homeowners had to pay $400. a month for garbage collection, they'd start hauling their own.

On the cotton farm, of which my dad was foreman, there was no way to find the number of workers needed to chop the cotton and pull the cotton.
Working in the fields was hard work for very little pay because farming cotton was not real profitable.
I'm sure it's the same on any farming project.

The demand for higher wages for these menial jobs smacks of unionization and socialism to me.
If temporary immigrant workers can do these jobs and keep the cost of the final product down, it benefits everyone.

I speak from a unique position of coming from a migrant worker family.
For most of my younger life we were chasing crops in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California.
I know what kind of life these people live - it's tough.
I understand GW's compassion.
I think he's got a good plan for starters.
I hope the implementation is as good as the plan.