I am no fan of the USA Patriot Act, but do concede that this immigration proposal was a good compromise. I noticed that prior to the State of the Union address tonight, a lot of freepers seemed very keen on the idea of blanket amnesty, believing this to be the only viable option for President Bush--this was clearly not so.
Awarding law-breaking should never be a solution to a problem, especially one has serious as our poreous border and 10 million unregistered, illegal aliens in our country. The most convincing argument that I have seen thus far in favor of automatic citizenship, is that farmers out West need the cheap labor in order to obtain their profit and labor goals. This problem could very well be likely as easily solved by just giving legal alien status to those illegals and their families who can already show that they active employment and have no criminal history. This seemed to be the compromise the President presented us tonight and it's a balanced one at that, for it gives both sides of the debate a bit of what they want.
Being too lenient in a serious situation such as this, will only cause our borders to become more poreous and show the entire world that the United States is not serious about their border security or the War on Terror.
President Bush was not too lenient on this issue tonight.
There is one thing that will fix this -- make the guest workers apply for it IN THEIR HOME COUNTRY!! Make the applications available from US Embassies abroad.