Posted on 08/05/2005 1:04:32 PM PDT by Reaganwuzthebest
The president, in a wide-ranging talk, gives a hint at how he'll pitch reform measures
GRAPEVINE - President Bush told a crowd of state legislators Wednesday that he will push immigration reform as beneficial for U.S. employers as well as foreigners looking for work.
He also made an impassioned pitch for Americans to stay behind the war in Iraq.
"Immigration reform is going to be an interesting subject when we get back to Washington" in September, said Bush, who plans to spend this month at his Crawford ranch.
He argued that his proposal for a "guest worker" program is good for employers and illegal immigrants who want a mutually beneficial relationship.
"If you are a willing employer (and) you have somebody looking for work and you can't find an American, there ought to be a legal way for you to employ that person," he said. "We'd rather have people coming in with a card that said, 'I'm a legal worker,' than trying to sneak across the border."
The president has proposed a system under which immigrants would be granted worker temporary worker status, after which they would have to leave the United States. Critics have called it a thinly veiled amnesty program. Immigration reform plans have stalled in Congress so far this year, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist recently suggested a GOP push on the issue was more likely to happen next year.
Talking hours after the first reports that 14 U.S. Marines were killed in Iraq, Bush said, "The violence in recent days in Iraq is a grim reminder of the enemies we face. These terrorists and insurgents will use brutal tactics because they're trying to shake the will of the United States of America."
With polls showing that public support for continued military involvement in Iraq is eroding in the face of steady casualties, Bush relied on a familiar linkage of the war with the larger struggle against terrorism. He said Americans who died in Iraq and Afghanistan "lost their lives in a noble cause."
Speaking to 1,800 people at the American Legislative Exchange Council conference, Bush basked in recent legislative victories delivered by a GOP majority in Congress, including the Central American Free Trade Agreement and energy and highways legislation.
Bush said his priorities when Congress reconvenes after Labor Day will be immigration reform, making his tax cuts permanent, getting Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts confirmed and resurrecting his Social Security reform initiative.
Bush drew loud cheers by saying he strongly believed in private retirement accounts for workers under 55. "Now is the time to permanently fix Social Security," he said.
The event was held at a mammoth convention center where visiting legislators were introduced to Texas pride, including a large replica of the Alamo, a 10-foot-long space shuttle model and other state symbols.
You can't let businessmen do that in a vacuum. They'll establish zero availability of U.S. workers by stipulating a Third World wage, or a compromise wage benchmarked to same, in order spuriously to claim that "no American workers" are available.
You can't implicitly let business control wages, or they'll reset wages to Calcutta levels, because they're greedy and don't want to pay people. My source for that statement? A former boss who came clean 30 years ago, because he knew he'd be getting rid of me in a couple of months anyway -- because I'd asked for the raise I'd been promised a year earlier!
Employers screw workers every chance they get. Adam Smith and Milton Friedman agree, you can't trust those guys for two milliseconds when there's money on the table.
If labor is weak, and when international labor is involved, the government as a whole has to exercise the syndical function, lest its people be beggared by international interests arbitraging and ripsawing regional labor markets, playing whole continents off against one another as a labor oligopsony.
Ping to my last.
"Reduce unemployment and welfare benefits."
People pay for unemployment when they are working. Now welfare is something else entirely. I was listening to a show the other night that said the overhead for the welfare programs are 75%.
He won't roll over.
I think that's Mexican Spanish for "screw you, gringo."
Enjoy the Democrat majority in the House and the Senate in 2007, Mr. President.
Hells bells! Slavery would benefit employers too.
No doubt about that.
This is worse than a cop-out Cecily. This is fundamentally dishonest. If they can't find an American to do the job then the solution isn't to bus in busloads of illegals but to raise the wages to the point where American's are attracted.
This is dishonest and he knows it!!
I'm becoming VERY disenchanted with President Bush.
Thanks
That will happen anyway, because business is grimly determined to have totally uncontrolled immigration. The kicker to their bottom line is too strong to overcome except with absolute certainty of ineluctable, dire punishment.
So far, the failure to enforce has emboldened them to the point of piracy; they're almost as brash as the narcotraficantes.
Then let the sumbiches sell their crap to the third world. Thats what really p*sses me off... they want to use third world labor & charge first world prices.
They must know its not sustainable, that they are killing the Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, but-they-just-don't-care.
ditto on that! AS I sit here drinking my margarita, I'm getting madder! Wake up George!
they either "re-up"
Or drop an anchor baby and ask to stay to protect the new American citizen.
I guess he is right.
It'll be like something out of Robert Heinlein's "future history" novels, in which the American landscape has come to recognize something like today's Baghdad, where you can't move down the street without reactive armor and a big gun on top.
In what way it will make Americans (US labor) more competitive if they get paid $4 or $2 per hour? How will they pay their bills (which are not at the Third World level? How will they get to work without cars?
Curious minds want to know?
He's fully awake and working hard. He's just not working for you on this issue.
Sorry to say.
I agree.
Plentiful cheap labor enables employers to keep wages low. That hurts low skill American workers who have to accept low wages to undercut illegals to get jobs. It also retards innovation. Employers with large pools of cheap labor don't have to find new, innovative, efficient, competitive ways to produce goods and services at low prices. They stay in business by paying their workers peanuts. Studies that have been done, I believe in Australia, prove this. Think of countries with large pools of cheap, relatively uneducated labor--they're not at the forefront of innovative economic powers.
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