The following is the text of President George W. Bush's speech on immigration delivered on Jan. 7, 2004:
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Thank you all for coming. Thanks for coming. Thanks for the warm welcome. Thanks for joining me as I make this important announcement, an announcement that I believe will make America a more compassionate, more humane and stronger country.
I appreciate members of my Cabinet who have joined me today, starting with our secretary of state, Colin Powell.
(APPLAUSE)
I'm honored that our attorney general, John Ashcroft, has joined us.
(APPLAUSE)
Secretary of Commerce Don Evans.
(APPLAUSE)
Secretary Tom Ridge of the Department of Homeland Security, I'm honored you're here.
BUSH: El Embajador de Mexico Tony Garza.
(APPLAUSE)
I thank all the other members of my administration who joined us today. I appreciate the Members of Congress who've taken time to come, Senator Larry Craig, Congressman Chris Cannon and Congressman Jeff Flake.
I'm honored you all have joined us. Thank you for coming.
I appreciate the members of citizen groups who've joined us today, chairman of the Hispanic Alliance For Progress, Mani Luhan (ph); Gil Moreno, the president and CEO of the Association for the Advancement of Mexican-Americans; Roberta Deposada, the president of the Latino Coalition; and Hector Flores, the president of LULAC.
Thank you all for joining us.
(APPLAUSE)
Many of you here today are Americans by choice, and you have followed in the path of millions. And over the generations, we have received energetic, ambitious, optimistic people from every part of the world.
By tradition and conviction, our country is a welcoming society. America is a stronger and better nation because of the hard work and the faith and the entrepreneurial spirit of immigrants.
Every generation of immigrants has reaffirmed the wisdom of remaining open to the talents and dreams of the world. And every generation of immigrants has reaffirmed our ability to assimilate newcomers, which is one of the defining strengths of
During one great period of immigration, between 1891 and 1920, our nation received some 18 million men, women and children from other nations.
BUSH: The hard work of these immigrants helped make our economy the largest in the world. The children of immigrants put on the uniform and helped to liberate the lands of their ancestors.
One of the primary reasons America became a great power in the 20th century is because we welcomed the talent and the character and the patriotism of immigrant families.
The contributions of immigrants to America continue. About 14 percent of our nation's civilian workforce is foreign born. Most begin their working lives in America by taking hard jobs and clocking long hours in important industries. Many immigrants also start businesses, taking the familiar path from hired labor to ownership.
As a Texan, I have known many immigrant families, mainly from Mexico, and I've seen what they add to our country. They bring to America the values of faith in God, love of family, hard work, and self-reliance; the values that made us a great nation to begin with.
We've all seen those values in action through the service and sacrifice of more than 35,000 foreign-born men and women currently on active duty in the United States military. One of them is Master Gunnery Sergeant Guadalupe Denogean, an immigrant from Mexico, who has served in the Marine Corps for 25 years and counting.
Last year, I was honored and proud to witness Sergeant Denogean take the oath of citizenship in a hospital where he was recovering from wounds he received in Iraq.
BUSH: I'm honored to be his commander in chief. I'm proud to call him "fellow American."
(APPLAUSE)
As a nation that values immigration and depends on immigration, we should have immigration laws that work and make us proud. Yet today we do not.
Instead we see many employers turning to the illegal labor market, we see millions of hardworking men and women condemned to fear and insecurity in a massive, undocumented economy.
Illegal entry across our borders makes more difficult the urgent task of securing the homeland. The system is not working. Our nation needs an immigration system that serves the American economy and reflects the American dream.
Reform must begin by confronting a basic fact of life and economics: Some of the jobs being generated in America's growing economy are jobs American citizens are not filling.
Yet these jobs represent a tremendous opportunity for workers from abroad who want to work and to fulfill their duties as a husband or a wife, a son or a daughter.
Their search for a better life is one of the most basic desires of human beings. Many undocumented workers have walked mile after mile, through the heat of the day and the cold of the night. Some have risked their lives in dangerous desert border crossings or entrusted their lives to the brutal rings of heartless human smugglers.
BUSH: Workers who seek only to earn a living end up in the shadows of American life, fearful, often abused and exploited.
When they're victimized by crimes they're afraid to call the police or seek recourse in the legal system. They are cut off from their families far away, fearing if they leave our country to visit relatives back home they might never be able to return to their jobs.
The situation I described is wrong. It is not the American way.
Out of common sense and fairness, our laws should allow willing workers to enter our country and fill jobs that Americans are not filling.
(APPLAUSE)
We must make our immigration laws more rational and more humane. And I believe we can do so without jeopardizing the livelihoods of American citizens.
Our reforms should be guided by a few basic principles.
First, America must control its borders. Following the attacks of September the 11th, 2001, this duty of the federal government has become even more urgent, and we're fulfilling that duty.
For the first time in our history we have consolidated all border agencies under one roof, to make sure they share information and the work is more effective.
We're matching all visa applicants against an expanded screening list to identify terrorists and criminals and immigration violators.
This month we have become using advanced technology to better record and track aliens who enter our country and to make sure they leave as scheduled.
BUSH: We have deployed new gamma and X-ray systems to scan cargo and containers and shipments at ports of entry to America.
We have significantly expanded the Border Patrol with more than 1,000 new agents on the borders and 40 percent greater funding over the last two years. We're working closely with the Canadian and Mexican governments to increase border security.
America is acting on a basic belief: Our borders should be open to legal travel and honest trade; our borders should be shut and barred tight to criminals, to drug traders, drug traffickers and to criminals and to terrorists.
Second, new immigration laws should serve the economic needs of our country. If an American employer is offering a job that American citizens are not willing to take, we ought to welcome into our country a person who will fill that job.
Third, we should not give unfair rewards to illegal immigrants in the citizenship process or disadvantage those who came here lawfully or hope to do so.
Fourth, new laws should provide incentives for temporary foreign workers to return permanently to their home countries after their period of work in the United States has expired.
Today I ask the Congress to join me in passing new immigration laws that reflect these principles that meet America's economic needs and live up to our highest ideals.
(APPLAUSE)
I propose a new temporary worker program that will match willing foreign workers with willing American employers when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs.
BUSH: This program will offer legal status as temporary workers to the millions of undocumented men and women now employed in the United States and to those in foreign countries who seek to participate in the program and have been offered employment here.
This new system should be clear and efficient so employers are able to find workers quickly and simply.
All who participate in the temporary worker program must have a job or, if not living in the United States, a job offer. The legal status granted by this program will last three years and will be renewable, but it will have an end. Participants who do not remain employed, who do not follow the rules of the program or who break a law will not be eligible for continued participation and will be required to return to their home.
Under my proposal, employers have key responsibilities. Employers who extend job offers must first make every reasonable effort to find an American worker for the job at hand. Our government will develop a quick and simple system for employers to search for American workers.
Employers must not hire undocumented aliens or temporary workers whose legal status has expired. They must report to the government the temporary workers they hire and who leave their employ so that we can keep track of people in the program and better enforce our immigration laws. There must be strong workplace enforcement with tough penalties for anyone -- for any employer violating these laws.
Undocumented workers now here will be required to pay a one-time fee to register for the temporary worker program. Those who seek to join the program from abroad and have complied with our immigration laws will not have to pay any fee.
All participants will be issued a temporary worker card that will allow them to travel back and forth between their home and the United States without fear of being denied re-entry into our country.
(APPLAUSE)
BUSH: This program expects temporary workers to return permanently to their home countries after their period of work in the United States has expired, and there should be financial incentives for them to do so.
I will work with foreign governments on a plan to give temporary workers credit when they enter their own nation's retirement system for the time they have worked in America.
I also support making it easier for temporary workers to contribute a portion of their earnings to tax-preferred savings accounts, money they can collect as they return to their native countries. After all, in many of these countries a small nest egg is what is necessary to start their own business or buy some land for their family.
Some temporary workers will make the decision to pursue American citizenship. Those who make this choice will be allowed to apply in the normal way. They will not be given unfair advantage over people who have followed legal procedures from the start.
I opposed amnesty, placing undocumented workers on the automatic path to citizenship. Granting amnesty encourages the violation of our laws and perpetuates illegal immigration.
America's a welcoming country, but citizenship must not be the automatic reward for violating the laws of America.
(APPLAUSE)
The citizenship line, however, is too long, and our current limits on legal immigration are too low.
My administration will work with the Congress to increase the annual number of green cards that can lead to citizenship.
BUSH: Those willing to take the difficult path of citizenship, the path of work and patience and assimilation, should be welcome in America, like generations of immigrants before them.
(APPLAUSE)
In the process of immigration reform, we must also set high expectations for what new citizens should know. An understanding of what it means to be an American is not a formality in the naturalization process, it is essential to full participation in our democracy.
My administration will examine the standard of knowledge in the current citizenship test. We must ensure that new citizens know not only the facts of our history, but the ideals that have shaped our history.
Every citizen of America has an obligation to learn the values that make us one nation: liberty and civic responsibility, equality under God, tolerance for others.
This new temporary worker program will bring more than economic benefits to America. Our homeland will be more secure when we can better account for those who enter our country.
Instead of the current situation, in which millions of people are unknown, unknown to the law, law enforcement will face fewer problems with undocumented workers, and will be better able to focus on the true threats to our nation from criminals and terrorists.
And when temporary workers can travel legally and freely, there will be more efficient management of our borders and more effective enforcement against those who pose a true threat to our country.
(APPLAUSE)
This new system will be more compassionate. Decent, hardworking people will now be protected by labor laws, with the right to change jobs, earn fair wages and enjoy the same working conditions that the law requires for American workers.
BUSH: Temporary workers will be able to establish their identities by obtaining the legal documents that we all take for granted. And they will be able to talk openly to authorities to report crimes when they're harmed without the fear of being deported.
(APPLAUSE)
The best way in the long run to reduce the pressures that create illegal immigration in the first place is to expand economic opportunity among the countries in our neighborhood.
In a few days I will go to Mexico for the Special Summit of the Americas, where we will discuss ways to advance free trade and to fight corruption and encou the nations of our hemisphere will lessen the flow of new immigrants to America when more citizens of other countries are able to achieve their dreams at their own home.
(APPLAUSE)
Yet our country has always benefited from the dreams that others have brought here. By working hard for a better life immigrants contribute to the life of our nation.
The temporary worker program I am proposing today represents the best tradition of our society, a society that honors the law and welcomes the newcomer.
This plan will help return order and fairness to our immigration system, and in so doing we will honor our values by showing our respect for those who work hard and share in the ideals of America.
May God bless you all.
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Here are some examples of the most common violations of United States Immigration laws:
Examples:
(This is not a complete list of violations.)
Twenty years ago a high school drop out could get a job in construction, trucking, or manufacturing, and still do pretty well for himself. Well enough to own a car and afford some type of housing, by the age of twenty.
One by one these jobs have been outsourced, or filled by a wage suppressing immigrant, lowering the expectation and living standard of many Americans. Such is not suppose to be the case. In raising the boat of third world nations we have sunk the boats of many average Americans. Meanwhile those that stick it out through college are finding their jobs outsourced and their options limited.
You are merely parroting the propaganda of the enemy like a good little public school student. There are not that many white collar jobs and in fact all jobs have been artificially manipulated out of the country, or by immigrants in country all due to deadly socialist government policies and freedom robbing Free Trade.
52 posted on 01/14/2004 5:15:38 AM PST by MissAmericanPie
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Conservative Debate Handbook
However, rounding them up when caught or reported and sending them back in batches would be relatively easy. Anybody on this forum could think of several ways to implement this without straining themselves.
If the "physically impossible" notion is malarkey, and it is, what else about the plan, that is not readily apparent, is also malarkey?
America's current mass immigration mess is the result of a change in the laws in 1965. Prior to 1965, despite some changes in the 50's, America was a low-immigration country basically living under immigration laws written in 1924. Thanks to low immigration, the swamp of cheap labor was largely drained during this period, America became a fundamentally middle-class society, and our many European ethnic groups were brought together into a common national culture. In some ways, this achievement was so complete that we started to take for granted what we had achieved and forgot why it happened. So in a spasm of sentimentality on the Right and lies on the Left, we opened the borders.
Born of liberal ideology, the 1965 bill abolished the national origins quota system that had regulated the ethnic composition of immigration in fair proportion to each group's existing presence in the population. In a misguided application spirit of the civil rights era, the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations saw these ethnic quotas as an archaic form of chauvinism. Moreover, as Cold Warriors facing charges of "racism" and "imperialism," they found the system rhetorically embarrassing. The record of debate over this seismic change in immigration policy reveals that left-wingers, in their visceral flight to attack "discrimination," did not reveal the consequences of their convictions. Instead, their spokesmen set out to assuage concerned traditionalists with a litany of lies and wishful thinking.
Chief among national concerns was total numeric immigration. Senate floor manager and Camelot knight-errant Ted Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, assured jittery senators that "our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually." Senator Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, further calmed that august body, insisting "the total number of potential immigrants would not be changed very much." Time has proven otherwise. Average immigration levels before the 1965 amendments took effect hovered around 300,000 per annum. Yet 1,045,000 legal immigrants flooded our cities in 1996 alone.
The 1965 "reform" reoriented policy away from European ethnic groups, yet implemented numbers similar to 1950's rates in an attempt to keep immigration under control. However, Congressmen managed to miss a loophole large enough to allow a 300 percent in immigration, because they did not take into account two "sentimental" provisions within the bill. Immediate family members of U.S. citizens and political refugees face no quotas. Their likely impact on the nation was ignored, presumably because aiding families and the dispossessed cast the right emotive glow.
Yet leftists could sound like hard-nosed defenders of the national interest when necessary. In urging passage of the 1965 bill, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, D-New York, wrote in a letter to the New York Times, "The time has come for us to insist that the quota system be replaced by the merit system." As if merit is the operative principle along the Rio Grande today! Similarly, Representative Robert Sweeney, D-Ohio, insisted the bill was "more beneficial to us." In fact, the 1965 bill made "family reunification" - including extended family members - the key criterion for eligibility. These new citizens may in turn send for their families, creating an endless cycle known to sociologists as the immigration chain. The qualifications of immigrants have predictably fallen. Hispanic immigrants, by far the largest contingent, are eight times more likely than natives to lack a ninth-grade education, and less than half as likely to have a college degree.
The bill did not end discrimination based on what President John F. Kennedy called "the accident of birth." (This of course begs the question of whether birth within the nation, the basis of common national community, is just an accident, but let that pass for now.) It de facto grossly discriminates in favor of Mexicans and certain other groups.
Not only has the bill failed in its stated purpose, it has realized many of its critics' worst nightmares. Concern mounted that this bill would radically change the ethnic composition of the United States. Such things were still considered legitimate concerns in 1965, in the same Congress that had just passed the key civil rights legislation of the 1960's.
Specific influx predictions that were made seem tragicomic today. Senator Robert Kennedy predicted a total of 5,000 immigrants from India; his successor as Attorney General, Nicholas Katzenbach, foresaw a meager 8,000. Actual immigration from India has exceeded by 1,000-times Robert Kennedy's prediction.
Senator Hiram Fong, R-Hawaii, calculated that "the people from [Asia] will never reach 1 percent of the population." Even in 1965, people were willing to admit that we have a reasonable interest in not being inundated by culturally alien foreigners, and it was considered acceptable to say so on the floor of the Senate. Try that today, even as a supposed conservative! (Asians currently account for three percent of the population, and will swell to near 10 percent by 2050 if present trends continue.)
The only remaining Congressman who had voted on the 1920s quotas, Representative Emanuel Celler, D-New York, insisted, "There will not be, comparatively speaking, many Asians or Africans entering this country." Today, the number of Asians and Africans entering this country each year exceeds the annual average total number of immigrants during the 1960s.
Yet the largest ethnic shift has occurred within the ranks of Hispanics. Despite Robert Kennedy's promise that, "Immigration from any single country would be limited to 10 percent of the total," Mexico sent 20 percent of last year's immigrants. Hispanics have made up nearly half of all immigrants since 1968. After a 30-year experiment with open borders, whites no longer constitute a majority of Californians or residents of New York City.
As immigrants pour in, native Americans feel themselves pushed out. In 1965, Senator Hugh Scott, R-Pennsylvania, opined, "I doubt if this bill will really be the cause of crowding the present Americans out of the 50 states." Yet half-a-million native Californians fled the state in the last decade, while its total population increased by three million, mostly immigrants. This phenomenon also holds true in microcosm. In tiny Ligonier, Indiana, (population 4,357) 914 Hispanics moved in and 216 native Americans departed during the 1990s. Hispanics now outnumber the Amish as the area's dominant minority.
Thirty-plus years of immigration at historic levels have also had an economic impact on America. In 1965, Ted Kennedy confidently predicted, "No immigrant visa will be issued to a person who is likely to become a public charge." However, political refugees qualify for public assistance upon setting foot on U.S. soil. The exploding Somali refugee population of Lewiston, Maine, (pop. 36,000) is largely welfare-dependent. Likewise, 2,900 of Wausau, Wisconsin's 4,200 Hmong refugees receive public assistance. In all, 21 percent of immigrants receive public assistance, whereas 14 percent of natives do so. Immigrants are 50 percent more likely than natives to live in poverty.
Ted Kennedy also claimed the 1965 amendments "will not cause American workers to lose their jobs." Teddy cannot have it both ways: either the immigrant will remain unemployed and become a public charge, or he will take a job that otherwise could have gone to a native American. What is presently undisputed - except by the same economic analysts at Wired magazine and the Wall Street Journal who gave us dot-com stocks - is that immigrant participation lowers wages.
Despite the overwhelming assurances of the bill's supporters, the 1965 Immigration Reform Act has remade society into the image its critics most feared. Immigration levels topping a million a year will increase U.S. population to 400 million within 50 years. Meanwhile, exponents of multiculturalism insist new arrivals make no effort to assimilate; to do so would be "genocidal," a notion that makes a mockery of real genocides. Instead, long-forgotten grudges are nursed against the white populace. Native citizens take to flight as the neighborhoods around them, the norms in their hometowns, are debased for the convenience of low-paid immigrants and well-heeled businessmen. All the while, indigenous paychecks drop through lower wages and higher taxes collected to provide social services for immigrants. And this only takes into account legal immigration.
These results were unforeseen by liberals easily led about by their emotions. Others were not so blind. Jewish organizations had labored since 1924 to unweave national origins quotas by admitting family members on non-quota visas. The B'nai B'rith Women and the American Council for Judaism Philanthropic Fund, among other Jewish organizations, supported this reform legislation while it was yet in subcommittee in the winter of 1965. Roman Catholics had the twin motivations of still-evolving social justice doctrine and the potential windfall of a mass influx of co-religionists from Latin America. Other organized minorities pressured for increased immigration to benefit relatives in their homelands. The ultra-liberal Americans for Democratic Action, the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild joined the chorus. Further, the Communist Party USA supported higher immigration on the grounds that it destabilizes working Americans.
Americans must realize demographic trends are not inevitable, the product of mysterious forces beyond their control. Today's population is the result of yesterday's immigration policy, and that policy is as clearly broken as its backers' assurances were facetious. A rational policy will only come about when native Americans place the national interest above liberal howls of "prejudice" and "tribalism."
2003: The Year in Immigration
Front Page Magazine ^ | January 23rd, 2003 | Steve Brown and Chris Coon
Posted on 01/23/2004 7:22:08 AM PST by Sabertooth
Even before President Bush’s amnesty proposal for illegal workers already working in the US was released this month, the issue had emerged as one of the hot topics in the US last year. Concerns about homeland security, the economy and other issues stemming from the rising tide of illegals flooding our shores brought the issue to the forefront of America's consciousness. Official government estimates of the number of illegals in the US at the beginning of last year ranged from 8-10 million, swelling to about 13 million by the end of the year, one of the most rapid periods of illegal immigrant population growth in our nation’s history.
Sanctuary Cities
Pushing illegal immigration past the high tide mark toward a critical mass on the list of national security and public safety concerns were numerous policies enacted by state and local governments that actively undermine any attempt to rein in the flow of potential terrorists, criminals or other undesirables. In some instances, these so-called "Sanctuary" policies specifically forbid local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration officials. While enacted under the auspices of providing social services and health care to illegal alien communities, these well-intentioned policies have led to disastrous consequences.
Among them: D.C sniper John Lee Malvo was able to avoid federal scrutiny in Washington state, which would have prevented his killing spree; the abduction, rape and murder of three women in the Houston area by an illegal; and the rape of a Queens, NY, woman. In each instance, local ordinances prevented federal authorities from identifying the alleged perpetrators as illegal aliens and deporting them. Later in the year New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg begrudgingly lifted the sanctuary policy only after being ordered by a federal court. But even as it was lifted others were enacted in Maine and Maryland. In October, the Department of Homeland Security's Operation Predator netted 1,300 arrests of convicted sex offenders, all of whom were here illegally. Experts say the efforts, while laudable, barely scratched the surface, as the initiative continued unearthing illegal non-citizen sexual predators through the end of the year. Over 80,000 aliens with criminal actions pending are currently loose on our streets, free to act.
In fairness, not all Operation Predator criminals benefited directly from Sanctuary policies. Moreover, many local police, such as those in Alabama and Florida, have begun training with DHS personnel specifically for assisting in federal immigration law enforcement. However the fledgling agency bore some stigma from its earlier incarnation: in numerous instances, local police who have attempted to work with the feds on immigration have been met with widespread institutional indifference under the Immigration and Nationalization Service in the past. But this year Homeland Security officials, who now have jurisdiction over immigration, began compiling a national database of immigrants, opening it to local police to help increase the flow of information and cooperation. Additionally, more funding has been made available and the Department of Justice is revamping the rules for local law enforcement to follow in the apprehension and detention of illegals. Yet no system remains fail-safe when U.S. politicians and foreign governments collude in pushing dangerous policies aimed directly at thwarting our immigration laws, which in a post-9/11 environment poses serious challenges to our national security.
"Idiotic" Matricula IDs
Matricular Consular cards, a form of ID issued by the government of Mexico, which is rife with security lapses, are used primarily by criminal aliens who posses no passport or visa allowing them to be here legally. State governments agencies, banks, landlords, employers, and even the some federal departments are currently accepting these ID cards. The widespread acceptance of this faulty ID prompted immigration reform firebrand Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-CO, to ask, “How can states be allowing illegal immigrants driver’s licenses which are . . . the passport to American society?”Calling the Matricula-acceptance practice “idiotic,” Tancredo cited instances of ATM-style machines near consular offices dispensing Mexican birth certificates, the sole requirement to obtaining the Matricula. In another case an Iranian was caught in possession of multiple Matriculas, under multiple aliases, proving how easily these “identification” cards can be abused and manipulated. The Bush administration initially appeared divided over the issue, with Treasury officials endorsing Matriculas and Justice officials denouncing them before Congress. Yet as the year wore on, Justice retracted its concerns. Legislation to ban Matriculas, offered by Rep. Tancredo, was soundly defeated on the House floor, despite polls showing overwhelming voter opposition to Matriculas. The year ended with the issue left unaddressed and the security concerns steadily growing at the state and local level.
License to Invade
In 2003 we saw the Democratic Governor of California Gray Davis, fighting for his political life, attempting to cater to Hispanic radicals by granting drivers’ licenses to illegals. Newly elected Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger repealed the law, but has left wiggle room to bring the matter back before the California General Assembly. States such as Rhode Island have eliminated similar license policies while others, such as Massachusetts and Arizona, debate adopting them. Some states allow the Matricular ID as proof of identity for a license and currently 13 states allow their issuance. This is again despite massive voter opposition.
Citizens Unite
Protect Arizona Now (PAN), a citizens group in Arizona, formed in 2003 to combat Democrat Gov. Janet Napolitano's ill-advised attempt to reward illegal immigration by granting aliens drivers’ licenses, government benefits, amnesty and the right to vote. Well on its way to collecting the signatures of 122,612 registered voters before the deadline of July 1, 2004, PAN plans to add the "Arizona Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act" to the 2004 ballot. It would require proof of citizenship before registering to vote, as well as requiring state workers to check the immigration status of anyone who applies for state services. PAN spokesperson Kathy McKee explained, “We’re the ones who, after the illegals come across the border, are having to pay through the nose for all these services. And then, of course, there’s the voting problem. So we just decided that we would try to find a way to bypass the political process and the liberal media and take it directly to the citizens of this state, because most people here...know what’s going on.”
Citizen uprisings in border states have run from the peaceful frustration of organized border patrol groups and petition gatherers in Arizona to semi-violent and nationalistic in states like Maine, who face a ground swell of immigrants from Somalia and other east African nations seeking out the generous welfare benefits offered in the insular state. Groups like the Texas-based Ranch Rescue and the Civil Home Defense Corps sought to clamp down on the porous southern border with Mexico. CHD founder Chris Simcox said, “We're doing what President George W. Bush has told us to do. We're volunteering to help protect our country. We want to help (the Border Patrol) get the job done until our government has the will to give them the manpower and the equipment that they need to do the job.”
Legislative Action
Immigrants from more than 100 nations, crossing borders illegally in the night or fraudulently obtaining or overstaying visas, have created chaos – and some politicians have attempted to restore some semblance of order. Legislation introduced in 2003 ran the gamut of the political spectrum ranging from increasing the security of the border to all but eliminating it. Bills are before the Senate to grant in-state tuition to the children of illegal aliens while denying the same to legal residents of adjoining states. Others in Congress push to grant citizenship to huge portions of the illegal population.
Helping make sense of it all.
Organizations such as FAIR, FILE and CIS have issued numerous polls, study papers and other reports highlighting the need and the vast majority political will of voters for common sense immigration reforms. But ACLU, MeCHA, MALDEF and other radical leftist groups have continued their assault on our nation's borders seeking to further undermine its security, all the while aided by politicians elected by those same voters polled on the matter.
A December CIS report (http://www.cis.org/articles/2003/back1703.html) examines this glaring disconnect between the American public will and their elected actors over this issue. It notes the popularity of immigration with the U.S. political elite saying no other issue illustrates the "great divide" between them and ordinary American citizens. Further, it says viewing the issue along traditional Republican/conservative and Democrat/liberal lines does not explain this behavior.
"As with communism in Eastern Europe, the high cost of actively opposing immigration in the United States leads to what Polish intellectual Czeslaw Milosz called 'Ketmanism,' which is 'acting out a series of public roles while masking one’s private opinions: a constant and universal masquerade,'" writes author Fredo Arias-King, a former aide to Mexican President Vincente Fox. "This Ketmanism applies not only to the political leaders we met, but also by and large to the American population, though in the opposite direction. The congressmen in private expressed positive views on immigration even though in public they vow to 'get tough,' while many Americans in private are more critical of immigration than they are in public."
The state of the union regarding illegal immigration
This year President George W. Bush, having already proposed immigration reform, faces re-election. Voters passionate about immigration reform may be disappointed with their choices at the ballot box, since no presidential candidate has expressed an interest in curtailing current levels of immigration or attempting the remove those already here illegally. Most would, as the Bush administration has proposed to do, reward them with some kind of amnesty, thus providing incentive for even more illegals to make their way through our porous borders.
Legislation is pending by Rep. Tom Tancredo and Rep. Charlie Norwood to help stem the flood of illegals, but their chances are slim as the administration and others have adopted more liberal stands. As voter concerns intensify over the coming year, the voters will take to the fight to the ballot box, the internet and talk radio shows to make their voices heard.
