*yawn* Smoke screen. Local police have always had authority to detain suspected illegal aliens. Court case after court case has supported that; in the early 70's, it was commonplace in the Southwest to see a local cop calling in the BP vans for a car that had just been stopped.
The only reason the practice ever stopped was because of chanting from the Ford Foundation supported reconquista groups, who just repeated over and over again that "eeemeegration is a federal matter, the local police have no jurisdiction". Nonsense, but they got a lot of cops to believe it.
We can talk about guest worker programs when:
- Those already here have to go home to apply
- No family reunification, since that's a subterfuge to get Anchor Babies in
- The Anchor Baby fraud is ended
- Affirmative Action for the amorphous group known as "hispanics" is ended
- No state or federal welfare benefits of any kind
- Working conditions and labor rates are IDENTICAL or better than those offered to citizens, and are congruent with existing labor laws
- Unemployment rate is below 2%, and citizen welfare recipients are all employed
In other words, end the Welfare State, end the Ethnic Identity Inequality which disenfranchises Americans, and prevent the hiring of foreign nationals to engage in wage competition, and then we'll talk.
Since the likelihood of any of these happening is ZERO, I know that I'm safe in suggesting them as a precondition for a "guest worker" program. But if the Senators truly wanted to use this issue to get something, they could insist on it.
Have you seen
H.R. 3534 (introduced by Rep. Tom Tancredo)? We need to support this bill by writing our Congresscritters instead of wasting our breath complaining about Bush's plan. Bush knew his plan wasn't going anywhere, it was part pandering and part throwing down of the gauntlet to Congress to take action...IOW, all politics.