Posted on 04/24/2006 11:25:27 AM PDT by kellynla
President Bush in Irvine today called for a rational, temporary guest worker program and said that attempting to deport as many as 12 million undocumented workers illegally in the United States was a policy that was not going to work.
Bush capped a four-day trip to California with a visit to the Orange County Business Council, made up of 300 businesses, where he gave his most detailed comments on immigration since a bipartisan compromise in the Senate fell apart more than two weeks ago.
Congress returned to Washington today from its holiday recess with immigration policy one of the key unresolved issues on its agenda.
"We cannot lose sight of that we are talking about human beings that need to be treated with respect," Bush told the group, adding, "Massive deportation of human beings is not going to work."
As he has before, Bush tried to temper his call for tough enforcement.
"You can be a nation of law and a compassionate nation at the same time," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
No, it wasn't. If you can get them signed up for the guest worker program, you will have their names and addresses,and a way to find and make them go home when their time is up.
You can't find 12 million people and ship them home. You can make it illegal to employ them, but you won't be able to arrest, prosecute, and convict the employers of 12 million people over a 6-year period. You can make it a felony to be here, but you can't jail 12 million people, or provide 12 million public defenders, in a few-year period.
The guest worker program is a way to get most of these people to come out of the shadows, so we can get rid of them later (or so we can evaluate them to determine which ones we want or need to stay).
A guest worker program properly implemented is certainly NOT what a lot of people here want, but it is the key to stopping the amnesty people. The more we fight the guest worker program, instead of embracing it and making sure it's temporary, the more likely we are to lose the fight over an amnesty bill.
I don't believe it is imperative to rid the country of the 12 million illegals in the next two years. They are here now, we can take a little time to purge the system.
We DO need to seal the borders NOW, and make harsher punishment for employers NOW, and turn the IRS and Social Security administrations on to provide the information they aren't sharing NOW, and to make a major thrust to catch and deport illegals NOW.
If we do that, we can use the guest worker program as the carrot which will flush millions of illegals out to where they can be tracked -- and take the sails out of the amnesty ship.
Strawman. I'm beginning to expect this out of the president.
You set up excutive policies and do it in about 5 years, or less.
A wall first, then we'll talk policy.
Eisenhower was much more conservative than the Bushies.
Meh. Cut off the money and they deport themselves.
Not if they break the law. Lets see here. Somebody poorer than myself breaks into my home, eats my food, and starts sleeping on my kitchen floor. Then he demands that I buy his food, clothes and gas for his car. He also informs me that his wife and 3 kids are sleeping in my attic. Respect? Yeah.
Massive re-election of Republicans in November is not realistic, either.
The current laws on the books contain enforcement mechanisms that are inadequate to do what you want. You want better enforcement, you have to change the law.
You people who refuse to see any realistic solution to this immigration situation are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Bloviate all you want -- your opinions are useless.
How depressing.
An American President tells his country and the world that it's "unrealistic" and not "compassionate" to secure our borders.
Strange times we're livin' in.
Call it Tax Amnesty.
Treat Mexican illegal immigrants the same as Mexico treats those who illegally cross it's southern border. If you don't know how Mexico treats them, then you haven't done your homework. HINT: you can get arrested and maybe shot if you try to illegally enter Mexico.
Bingo -- stop making it so easy, profitable, cushy, and "safe" to be an illegal here, and most will migrate back to where they came from. It'll also choke off most of the flow coming *in*. No need for "massive deportation" at all.
Nothing works if you don't even attempt it.
susie
That's fine. The conservative movement in this country is pretty much dead anyway.
"Can you give a little background on when/how this happened?"
google "operation wetback" for starters
or start here
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/OO/pqo1.html
So does that mean we don't have to obey the law anymore? It wouldn't be compassionate to arrest me simply because I choose to stop paying taxes or go to Canada to by cheap medicine.
Bush is trying to shove us into the One World Order with ease, and just drop our borders. I see what he is doing here. We have a world bank, a world court, so we are on our way to dropping our borders and our soverignty. The UN needs a standing army and powers of taxation.
Treaties supercede our laws.
Sure you can, but letting illegal aliens insist on what laws we are going to enforce is not compassionate. I think Bush has the same idea of compassion as alot of parents do. No discipline, don't dare say no, let the child (or in his case the illegal alien) run things so that they stay happy....I guess he wants to be their friend, instead of the President.
susie
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