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Copy of e-mail I received this AM from Numbers USA. Thought I'd pass it along. Keep up the heat folks. We ARE making a difference!

FRIENDS, HERE IS WHAT I HEARD AND SAW TONIGHT:

As we feared and predicted, Pres. Bush tonight used his pledge to use the National Guard on the border as just another way to sell the overall open borders agenda of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But I saw a lot of hope in the reactions on TV tonight. And we are getting a lot of signs of hope here on Capitol Hill for beating the Bush-Kennedy-Frist-Hagel-Martinez-McCain-Specter "comprehensive" amnesty in the House -- and maybe in the Senate.

As you make your phone calls and send your faxes Tuesday, you may be interested in my observations from tonight.

No. 1: Bush endorses citizenship for most of the 12 million illegal aliens

For more than two years, Bush has promised not only that he would not support an "amnesty" but that he was opposed to giving citizenship to illegal aliens and that illegal aliens have to eventually go home.

Tonight, he gave 100% support to citizenship for most of the 12 million illegal aliens in this country -- without any of them having to return home.

He said he rejected those who argue for amnesty for illegal aliens.

He also said that "some argue to deport every illegal immigrant," but that is impossible.

He then proposed a "rational middle ground" that makes illegal aliens pay real penalties and who have to suffer through the supposed hardship of paying back taxes and learning English while abstaining from committing any felonies. Then, all of the illegal aliens should get a chance to become citizens as a part of our "welcoming" immigration tradition, he said.

No. 2: Bush the 2nd's Flip Flop More Politically Disastrous Than Bush the 1st's Flip Flop on "Read My Lips, No New Taxes"?

This Pres. Bush promised in the 2004 campaign debates that he would not support any kind of citizenship amnesty. And he has done so in repeated press conferences and speaking opportunities.

What he did tonight cannot be explained away. Either he was deliberately misleading the American people the last two years, or he has radically changed his mind, in which case he should have said so and explained why he no longer feels he should honor his promises.

But there was no acknowledgement that he was reneging on repeated promises made to the citizenry.

Pres. Bush's father lost enough support from his political base over his back-tracking on taxes (NumbersUSA takes no position on that issue) that he lost his re-election bid. This Pres. Bush has no more elections of his own, but he may help bring down his party this fall by this kind of deception or flip-flopping.

Perhaps I am being a bit of a moralist in my outrage at the President's lack of honesty in this matter. But I am deeply offended by what appears to be this White House's belief that most Americans are too dumb or too distracted to notice that he has made this switch -- and by the President's apparent belief that Americans will be so excited by his troops on the border that they won't mind rewarding 10 million or so illegal aliens with citizenship.

No. 3: Bush's rhetoric on the problems at our border and need to fix them sounded great. Made me wonder who has been President the last five years and allowed the border to be such a mess.

I know that I'll get a huge amount of emails fed up with my negative attitude toward this President. But Mr. Bush has had the full power for most of his five years to do everything on the borders he is proposing now.

He is the one who consistently pushed for lower spending on border security. He is the one who refused to spend the full amount Congress appropriated for more Border Guards, detention beds, etc.

He is the one whose Department of Homeland Security officials have routinely tied the hands of the Border Patrol and interior enforcement officers so that they could not vigorously enforce the laws already on the books.

Nonetheless, I liked the first part of his speech acknowledging that we do not have control of our borders and about the pressures that puts on our schools, hospitals and many other parts of our society. Some commentators said they didn't remember Bush previously detailing those kinds of problems.

He has it in his power to make all the changes on the border without even any more legislation. The White House staff is indicating that he is putting his proposals tonight into motion to happen over the next two months.

How wonderful would that be if the Senate mass amnesty stalls and Mr. Bush finds himself having to carry out his border promises without an amnesty passing!

Unfortunately, Mr. Bush tonight continued to seem to hold our border security hostage to his desires for massive additional flows of foreign workers. In the past, he has implied that he would not give us border security until Congress gave him a big new guest worker program.

Tonight, he seemed to join national Democratic leadership which has long said that they won't support border security unless they get an amnesty, too.

Bush and his Sen. McCain-led Republican worker-importing allies, plus the Democratic leadership, continue to hold border security hostage as not our right as U.S. citizens but as a privilege they will bestow on us only in certain circumstances.

Fortunately, there is one power center that says border security is our right and should be given to us without any strings attached. That would be the House Republican majority (and backed by three dozen House Democrats, a half-dozen Senate Democrats and somewhere between 20 and 30 Senate Republicans.)

Those House Members, in particular, need regular affirmation from all of you that standing firm against the President's and Senate's amnesty dreams is the most politically popular approach they can take and that they should continue to hold firm to that position.

No. 4: Pres. Bush a master of 1984-like Doublespeak

Amnesty would reward people for breaking the law, he said tonight.

He opposes amnesty, he said tonight.

Then, after describing how he would reward nearly all illegal aliens with citizenship, he pronounced dictionarylike that what he had just described is not an amnesty.

Of course, Senators Kennedy, McCain and most of the editorial boards of our nation's newspapers have preceded him in changing the meaning of "amnesty" because they discovered in polling that American oppose anything called an amnesty.

It was incredible how, in Bush's address, the illegal aliens trying to storm the borders whom he said the National Guard would stop were later described as just good people who work hard and go to church.

How can we trust a President to secure our borders against waves of illegal workers when he acknowledges that he considers them all to be doing the honorable thing by breaking our laws (well, honorable enough that they just have to pay a couple weeks' wages to qualify to stay forever)?

No. 5: The President skewers House enforcement bill, implies denunciation of House Republicans and endorses the Hagel/Martinez "compromise" (without naming it) now on the floor of the Senate

We think that everything the President called for tonight (except the National Guard) matches what is in the bill on the Senate floor that was put together by Sen. Hagel (R-Nebraska) and Sen. Martinez (R-Florida). This bill is built on the outline of a bill that was first written by Sen. Kennedy's (D-Massachusetts) staff.

In so doing, the President set himself up four-square against his Party's leadership and more than 90% of its Members in the House who passed H.R. 4437 that deals with illegal immigration only through enforcement and not by primarily offering rewards (as in the Senate bills).

He mentioned that the House had passed a bill and then said the only viable action is a "comprehensive" bill that provides citizenship for illegal aliens and channels for massive new flows of foreign workers.

No. 6: Senate Democrats' response solidly behind Bush

Sen. Durbin (D-IL) delivered the Democrats' response. He made a few swipes at the President to remind people that they aren't in the same Party. But then endorsed nearly everything the President had said.

Durbin tried to one-up the President in doublespeak by saying that Congress should not give an amnesty but that illegal immigrants who "work hard and play by the rules" should have the chance to become citizens.

Made me wonder what "play by the rules" means in Sen. Durbin's part of the world.

No. 7: Bush and Durbin apparently are not aware that any nation has immigration laws to protect the vulnerable members of its own community and to provide the necessary structure for a national community to exist

Nowhere in their speeches tonight did they show any awareness that the numbers of new foreign workers each year could actually harm anybody.

All of their attention was on the fairness to all the foreign nationals who are just trying to better themselves by illegally coming here.

If anybody heard a drop of compassion for disabled Americans who are as unemployed today as a decade ago -- or for the 40% of Black American men who don't have a full-time job -- or for the masses of underemployed American programmers and engineers -- or the 12 million Americans who are now or have just recently been on the official unemployed rolls -- or for urban Americans who spend too much of their lives stuck in congested traffic, commerce, schools and recreational areas -- or for millions of American families who have been struggling to adjust to declines in their real wages ...........

......... If anybody heard any compassion for these Americans by Bush or Durbin, please point it out to me.

The bankruptcy of their moral vision for America is the same as what I saw in Bush's original proposal in January of 2004. You can read my analysis at:

numbersusa.com/press/BushPropAnal.html

No. 8: Rep. Peter King once again a hero

Did any of you New Yorkers before a year ago ever imagine that Rep. King (R-NY) would become one of the most sensible, courageous leaders in Congress when it came to illegal immigration?

Since helping author a rather weak section of H.R. 4437 from his post as chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, King has become a constantly reliable champion of the much-tougher bill that was amended into passage on the House floor.

Tonight, he refused appeals by Fox host Bill O'Reilly to compromise just a little with the Senate in order to get the border security provisions through.

"No matter how you slice it, that is an amnesty," Rep. King said about Pres. Bush's insistence that he was not backing an amnesty.

You should have heard the cheers in our NumbersUSA Capitol Hill townhouse when King unmasked the dishonest portrayal by Bush that our side is asking for mass roundups and deportations.

Nobody in Congress is asking for that -- certainly not the House, King said. Rather, the House has passed enhanced enforcement that will increase the number of illegal aliens who pay their own way to go back home each year, he said.

Rep. Tancredo (R-CO) was on the same show and jumped in to give the approach the name of "attrition." Not "amnesty" and not mass deportation, but an attrition approach is the true practical middle way, Tancredo indicated.

O'Reilly again begged the two to not be so hard-line and to compromise with the Senate by offering to accept some amnesty in return for tough border controls. "Can you guys compromise at all?" he asked.

"I don't see how we can," King said. "No compromise," Tancredo said.

King said there could be room to talk about some compromise a few years from now after confirming that enforcement was succeeding and lots of current illegal aliens are returning home. But an amnesty now will just bring more illegal aliens, he said.

Rep. King is widely believed to be one of the people who will represent the House on the Conference Committee which will be charged with taking the House and Senate bills and coming up with a single bill. His attitude tonight indicates a strong bias toward taking the things the bills have in common -- enforcement -- and coming up with an enforcement-only bill.

No. 9: Sen. Frist and Sen. Allen: Two very different ways to run for President

Both Sen. Frist (R-TN) and Sen. Allen (R-VA) are strongly considering runs for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008.

Both of them were on the Hannity & Colmes cable show to respond to Bush's speech.

The contrast could not have been greater.

Unlike Bush and to his credit, Frist did not hide the fact that he had radically changed his position on amnesty. He admitted that he had fairly recently insisted that enforcement should be pursued before taking on other aspects of "immigration reform" and that he had not been in favor of legalizing illegal aliens.

Tonight, he had tried to mainly emphasize how much he agreed with Bush's enforcement talk. But Colmes pinned him down to where he agreed that he supports the legalization of most illegal aliens as outlined in the Hagel/Martinez bill and by Bush tonight.

Immediately after, Sen. Allen did something that no major presidential candidate has done in 14 years: He positioned himself in a way that makes it possible for him to lay claim to the loyalties of the majority of Americans of all parties who want to get tough on illegal immigration.

He said he was glad the President finally is coming around to acknowledging that we should seal the border with fences, virtual fences, detention spaces, more Border Patrol and supplementing with National Guard.

But ....

Sen. Allen said the country must not "reward illegal behavior."

He said he does not suport his President's providing a path to citizenship.

And then he accused the President of not fighting fair. He said the President in his speech had "set up a straw man" by claiming that the alternative to amnesty was mass deportation. Nobody is pushing that as the alternative. It is a false choice. And it doesn't describe the enhanced enforcement approach of the anti-amnesty Members of Congress.

Sen. Allen said the President had offered some "nice examples" and good remarks but failed to deal forthrightly with an issue that "is tearing this country apart."

"We tried amnesty 20 years ago," and now we have 11 million illegal aliens here, Allen said. "Rewarding illegal behavior only begets more illegal behavior."

After such a stellar performance, Allen stumbled in then supporting more foreign tech workers and more seasonal, temporary workers. Virginians and Republicans, you are going to have to work to educate him in these areas.

But then, Allen was asked about Frist's comments earlier. Allen said about the worst thing he could have said to undermine a political competitor for support from the Republican Party's base. Allen said that Frist's views are "similar to Sen. McCain's!"

And that they are.

When the TV hosts tried to badger Allen into conceding some kind of compromise with the McCain part of the Republican Party, Allen said there might be room to talk about some of those things "a few years down the line" after proving that enforcement is fully implemented.

SOME FEEDBACK FROM YOUR CALLS TODAY

Jeremy filed this summary of some of your feedback on your calls to Congress and White House today.

It didn't take long for our users to start burning up the phone lines.

Calls to the White House:

Lots of busy signals and "all operators are busy" messages. Many leaving voicemail messages, many are being forwarded to their Senator or Rep. Many are getting through. Some callers are waiting 2-3 minutes to leave a message.

One caller was provided with (202) 456-1111 number to call by the operator. But that caller says that number is always busy.

Calls to Dems (minus Kennedy/Reid):

Clinton (NY) - "inundated with calls from folks like myself....claimed to be concerned about the middle class....afraid to be firm on any side of the issue.....I feel better after I make these calls because I am at least letting my elected representatives know how important this issue is. I try to speak enough on the talking points to let them know I am informed. Thank you for being a wonderful watchdog that is clearly waking America up before it is too late." - Richard D., Rochester, NY

Stabenow (MI) - "claimed that Stabenow has changed her position on amnesty and guestworker programs. I told them her voting record does not match her rhetoric....said my vote in November will totally depend on how she performs on this issue." - Larry S., Grand Blanc, MI

Calls to Repubs (minus open-borders gang):

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
The Staffer was friendly, I have spoken to her before I asked her what Senator Isaksons position was on the bill Senator Frist was going to bring to a vote this week, she said the Senator was dead set against any so call comprehensive bill and that he wanted the borders secured before dealing with any kind of guest worker or amnesty bill and she said that the Senator was proposing an amendment to the bill that would require the borders be secured and certified secured by the Dept. Of Homeland Security first she also said that Senator Isakson
may not vote for the bill even if his amendment was included in the bill and that it would also depend on which other amendments were included in the bill before he voted for it if he did at all. -- Donald H., Augusta, GA

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
The staffer was friendly and assured me that Senator Chambliss was going to vote against the Senate bill this week and that he would not vote for any bill that contained the so called comprehensive approch that would include amnesty or guest worker provisions that he was standing firm for an enforcement only bill and has not changed his pre easter position on this issue. --Donald H., Augusta, GA

Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL)
Staffer was cool, wanted rid of me fast. Mel Martinez came to this country like me. Is this how he repays the country that gave him freedom? He should be ashamed! I call or e-mail someone every day. I think this is the most important task I have ever undertaken. I am an immigrant. The attitude of the
pro-amnesty in your face disrespect for our laws is just too much! -- Beatrice G., Alachua, FL

Calls to Dems from Dems:

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY)
Staffer was very symapthetic, said Schumer is not for amnesty but illegals here 5 years or more ... well you know the rest ,I said it is still an amnesty for breaking the law. They actually agreed with me that employers should be fined for hiring and it should be made mandatory that employers call to varify validity of S.S. numbers. -- James V., Huntington, NY

Some opines from NRO... almost all are negative to the speech.

This excerpt from J.D Hayworth is dead on:

"There was one area of agreement. The president said his plan allowing illegal aliens a pathway to citizenship wasn’t amnesty. He’s right—it’s better than amnesty. Illegal aliens come to work, not to become Americans. The president would let them work and get citizenship as a bonus. They’d also be pardoned for crimes, like using a phony Social Security card, which would land any American in serious trouble."

Meet El Presidente
Bush on the border.

By An NRO Symposium

Editor's note: On Monday night, President George W. Bush delivered a primetime address on immigration. National Review Online gathered a group of experts to react to it. Read their analysis below.

George Borjas

President Bush has a huge disadvantage when talking about immigration reform: He is not credible. He spent more than half his time discussing border enforcement, a subject that has not interested him before. Perhaps at the next press conference someone will ask why he did not take the meager steps outlined last night soon after 9/11.

He added a new rationale for a guest-worker program. Not only does Bush buy into the idea that guest-workers do jobs that “Americans are not doing,” he also believes that guest-workers are needed because the increased border enforcement and the new-and-improved employer sanctions cannot stem the tide of illegal immigration. How’s that for declaring defeat before the battle begins? Notably, President Bush skipped the part about how “temporary” guest-workers typically become permanent immigrants.

Finally, the president returned to the amnesty proposal that has obsessed him since the summer of 2001. But the illegals being granted relief will have to “wait in line behind those who play by the rules.” As of last night, some Filipinos have been waiting since November 1, 1983. Somehow, I suspect that Bush’s amnesty does not include a 23-year queue. In short, an untrustworthy and depressing sales pitch.

—George Borjas is Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at Harvard.

Senator John Cornyn

You might have missed it, but tucked into the president’s speech Monday night was an important commitment to federal assistance for local law enforcement. Legislation that will help meet their needs was also included in the immigration bill that’s now pending before the Senate. But the president’s support for the program—if properly funded—will give a much-needed boost to the men and women now providing needed backup to federal agencies along the border.

This important assistance, sometimes referred to as the 287(g) program, allows state and local law-enforcement officials to enforce our nation's immigration laws. However, in order to participate in this program, the officers must undergo specialized immigration training and acquire customized equipment before the Department of Homeland Security will certify them. Sheriffs and other law-enforcement agencies are actively pursuing assistance in facilitating training and other support. And the enhanced arrest authority this program provides has empowered local agencies to combat the steady increase of crime and violence stemming from the presence of illegal immigrants already in their communities. But a number of local agencies, particularly smaller jurisdictions along the southern border, lack the resources to send their officers to receive training or to purchase the required equipment and cannot justify local tax increases to carry out what is fundamentally a federal responsibility.

Ultimately, the federal government must live up to its responsibility to secure the border, and the president's renewed commitment Monday to reach that goal is an important step. But as we increase border-patrol agents, immigration inspectors, and detention beds, we should do all we can to draw on the presence and experience of existing law enforcement across this country to ensure the safety of their communities and, ultimately, the protection of the homeland.

— Senator John Cornyn is a Republican from Texas.

James R. Edwards Jr.

The president confirmed why his job-approval rating on immigration, 29 percent, is lower than his overall approval rating, 31 percent.

Mr. Bush’s primetime televised speech Monday night amounted to more empty words. The speech betrayed that comprehensive immigration reform is really code for amnesty and virtually open borders. Like the Senate, he’s learned nothing from our amnesty experience. Call it what he might, Mr. Bush continued to dangle amnesty before the world. Little wonder why the borders aren’t secured! If the president were serious about controlling immigration, he could reinstate enforcement measures he stopped: Social Security no-match letters to employers, border-patrol interior stings, NSEERS alien registration, for example.

He could stop opposing the CLEAR Act behind closed doors and empower willing state and local law enforcement nationwide. He could stop banks from accepting matricula consular ID cards. He could prosecute several hundred more than the three cases against employers of illegal aliens brought in 2004.

Mr. Bush could send the Army, Marines, and Air Force to the border, instead of the National Guard for a support capacity. He could build a real border barrier from the Gulf to the Pacific. He could stop ratting out the Minutemen to the Mexican government.

Actions speak louder than words. We got plenty more words.

—James R. Edwards Jr. is an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute.

James G. Gimpel

The president’s speech was not reassuring and it proves that the business lobby is still driving the bus on this issue over at the White House. The president’s insistence on a “comprehensive” approach was code for "let’s water down anything by way of serious enforcement." This speech was a broadside directed toward the House GOP, signaling that the White House favors the Senate’s permissive approach.

The speech revealed persistent misunderstandings about immigration and the U.S. economy, but views widely held by highly paid business lobbyists. Toward the end of the speech and after conjuring up a series of romantic immigration images, the president said, “Immigrants are just as they’ve always been.” But that’s not the problem. The problem is that the U.S. is not “what it has always been”—or what it was 100 years ago. Legions of additional low-skill workers cannot be easily absorbed in an economy that increasingly values skills and education. There are already many low-skill natives (and previous immigrants) who are struggling to advance. On this current worrisome policy trajectory, we stand to vastly multiply the number of strugglers, making advancement much more difficult than it was in 1906 when the economy did not require much by way of skills, literacy, and education.

Finally, among those backing the president’s approach, there is no serious reckoning for how the path to legalization will be implemented, and the assumption that there will be widespread willingness to take this path is yet unproven. In the end, it is the implementation of immigration laws that lacks all credibility, not the laws themselves.

— James G. Gimpel is a professor of government at the University of Maryland.

Victor Davis Hanson

The president's comprehensive proposals include something for everyone:

For the conservative base: tamper-resistant identity cards; the National Guard on the border; employer sanctions; and emphasis on assimilation.

Liberals applaud a sort of earned citizenship without forced deportations; and appreciate Kumbaya rhetoric.

Libertarians and employers get their guest-worker program.

Of course, for those very same reasons no group will be happy. Yet the president mapped out the middle ground that will probably form the parameters of all future debate.

But my own chief worry is that guest-workers will only perpetuate the problem by supplying a continual unassimilated, low-paid, and ultimately volatile underclass. And such a helot program (a cultural and social catastrophe in Europe) is, in fact, antithetical to many of the president's own proposals. Cheap labor will undermine the wages of the very illegal aliens that are granted residence while they apply for citizenship; it will continually provide the fuel for La Raza and Aztlan romance; and keep fresh the tired ethnic sloganeering and tribal activists who hate assimilation and would die on the vine without fresh victims of "exploitation"—while ensuring that Mexico gets its remittances and avoids reform by exporting its unwanted.

Second, there was nothing specific offered to match the rhetoric of assimilation. Why not introduce court-proof, English-only legislation that would return our federal documents to one language? Or at least proposals in our schools to emphasize the melting pot? Or new patriotic citizenship applications that emphasize English and knowledge and appreciation of American culture?

All in all, I think the speech was politically astute in its emphasis on "transition" and the evolving nature of his remedies, and, pace critics, will probably earn the president more supporters than detractors. — Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.

J. D. Hayworth
The president last night was unconvincing. The enforcement proposals sounded good, but I don’t think his heart was in it.

The president said the U.S. wouldn’t militarize the border when it’s already been militarized—by the drug smugglers, coyotes, and Mexican troops. He said temporary workers must return to their home country when their work visas expire, but doesn’t tell us what will happen when they don’t.

Under the president’s plan, the more flagrantly you’ve broken the law, the bigger your reward. And if anyone needs a lecture on civility it is Vicente Fox and company, not our fellow Americans.

There was one area of agreement. The president said his plan allowing illegal aliens a pathway to citizenship wasn’t amnesty. He’s right—it’s better than amnesty. Illegal aliens come to work, not to become Americans. The president would let them work and get citizenship as a bonus. They’d also be pardoned for crimes, like using a phony Social Security card, which would land any American in serious trouble.

I was especially disappointed that the president again pushed the canard that some want to round up all illegal aliens. There is not a single elected official in Washington proposing that.

All in all, a missed opportunity.

— J. D. Hayworth is a congressman from Arizona. He is author of Whatever It Takes.

Dan Lungren

The president has finally got it right by emphasizing the enforcement of our immigration laws as foundational to the other aspects of comprehensive reform. His call for 6,000 additional border-patrol positions, financial incentives for state and local cooperation with federal immigration officials, the deployment of the national guard in a supportive capacity, and the use of advanced technology and barriers along our southern border, all act as a force multiplier with respect to our immigration enforcement capacity.

As the author of the provisions in the House immigration bill, which would end the catch-and-release program for "other than Mexicans," I commend the president for his recognition that we must end this practice and increase our detention capacity.

The president's recognition of the need for a verifiable form of identification is essential if we are to be successful in demagnetizing the attraction of unlawful employment. At the same time a temporary-worker program can contribute to regulating the flow of illegal immigration and making the job of the border patrol more manageable. However, it must in fact be temporary, and must not be conflated with a disguised amnesty.

— Dan Lungren is a Republican member of the House of Representatives from California.

Heather Mac Donald

Dangling strings of shiny trinkets, President Bush tried last night to make contact with the restive natives. Six thousand National Guard troops on the border! Infrared cameras! Biometric work cards! Those baubles will dazzle ‘em, the Bush speechwriters must have concluded, and they’ll never notice that we’ve changed nothing in the border-breaking status quo.

Creating a biometric card is meaningless if you don’t penalize employers who ignore it. No fortifications at the border can withstand the avalanche of people seeking to violate our laws so long as they know that once they get across the border, they’re home free in a 3,000-square-mile sanctuary zone. But Bush said nothing about worksite enforcement. If this administration wanted to end illegal immigration, it would exchange those 6,000 National Guard troops for 6000 immigration agents with the mandate to enforce the laws that Congress passed 20 years ago.

Nowhere was the White House’s contempt for the American people more manifest than in Bush’s double-talk on amnesty, however.

First he demonizes those who have argued for immigration-law enforcement and grotesquely distorts their position: “Some argue that the solution is to deport every illegal alien and that anything short of that is amnesty,” Bush alleged.

I know of no one who has called for deporting every illegal alien. Instead, thoughtful analysts like Mark Krikorian have laid out the attrition strategy: Engage in just a little bit of enforcement to create a huge deterrent effect. After DHS deported 1,500 illegal Pakistanis following 9/11, 15,000 more left on their own.

And opponents of amnesty do not argue that anything short of mass deportations equals amnesty. They make a much simpler argument: Amnesty equals amnesty. Bush’s advisers apparently think that the public can be fooled into believing that if there are a few procedural requirements to gaining legal status, the end result—amnesty—simply disappears. Those procedural requirements are themselves a joke. As Mickey Kaus has explained, Bush’s “illegals-must-wait-at-the-end-of-the-line” line is a con: by remaining in the country and jumping into the citizenship line, rather than the visa line, illegals have catapulted way ahead of law-abiding intending immigrants waiting in their home countries for a visa. But even if the procedural requirements for amnesty were grueling, the final result is the same: people who are in violation of the law are granted lawful status.

The tens of millions of aliens contemplating an illegal trip across the border will grasp that truth immediately; the Bush team thinks that the American public will not be so quick to see through the bait-and-switch bromides. The next month will tell if that gamble is right.

— Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor at City Journal.

John O'Sullivan

I listened to the speech with some nervousness because my Chicago Sun-Times column was a critique of it, written and sent to press about two hours before Mr. Bush began speaking. (No shameful Fleet Street tabloid deception here—I leveled with the readers.) But would I be shown up as a laughably out-of-touch hack who had forecast all kinds of arguments the president never said and whose criticisms were accordingly wide of the mark?

Within minutes—no, seconds—I knew I was safe. Every misleading point I had deconstructed, every shallow rhetorical device I had unraveled, every omission I had forecast—all were trotted out, present and incorrect. None of this suggests any great insight on my part. The speech was a tired and tiring repetition of all the president’s previous sayings on immigration. Like them it was designed to suggest that he would be tough on border security and illegal immigration when in fact the small print of his proposals amounts to the “open door” that he celebrated in his peroration.

Take the idea of sending the National Guard to the border. This idea seems to shrink hourly so as not to offend Vicente Fox. The guard will now apparently play a purely advisory role in defending the country. But why will stepped-up border enforcement be needed if anyone who can contrive a job offer from a “willing employer” can be admitted perfectly legally? Tough talk about border security is simply camouflage for Bush’s policy of halting illegal immigration by the simple device of making it legal. Prospectively legal in the case of his guest-worker program, retrospectively legal as regards his “not an amnesty” amnesty.

Nor is the National Guard idea anything new. If you type “Bush,” “border security,” and “new initiative” into Google, almost 15,000 entries pop up.

To judge from reactions to the speech, however, there are some conservatives willing to be fooled fifteen thousand times. Still, there is an interesting division within the reactions. Those who follow the immigration debate closely were almost uniformly derisive about the speech. They know the details behind the rhetoric: for instance, that the president’s assurance that illegals will have to go to the back of the line behind legal immigrants actually means that they will be given the right of U.S. residency right away. Those who tuned in to the debate only recently, presumably most Americans, take the misleading rhetoric seriously. That is why the initial reception to the speech is likely to be more approving than the final verdict of most Americans when they learn that it promises the arrival of at least 103 million more people in the next 20 years and additional costs to the U.S. taxpayer of $30 billion annually. At least—in both cases.

When a presidential adviser was asked how such proposals could pass, he replied that the White House would marginalize their opponents. Oddly enough, though these opponents are about 70 percent of the American people, Bush may temporarily succeed in marginalizing them, at least inside the Beltway. But the long-term effect will be to marginalize the Republican party. Look at the Democrats smiling behind their hands—they have just been given the kiss of life. — John O'Sullivan is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington and editor-at-large of National Review. He is currently writing a book on Reagan, Thatcher and Pope John Paul II.

Matthew Spalding
President Bush was good last night, strong on border issues and powerful on the idea of assimilation. The problem is that, no matter how many times he denies it, he favors amnesty.

This is underscored by the striking similarities between this proposal and the Immigration Control and Reform Act of 1986, which was neither “automatic citizenship” nor mass deportation. It, too, required several conditions, including added fees, learning English, background checks, and signing up for military service. The difference was that Reagan and everyone at the time discussed it for what it was: amnesty.

But however well intentioned, and even reasonable, the IRCA amnesty approach was a complete failure. Massive document fraud expanded the numbers, enforcement became politically objectionable and illegal immigration flourished. We’ve been there and done that before.

Let’s secure the borders, strengthen enforcement, and begin designing a reasonable and limited temporary-worker program. Deeply embedded illegal aliens here now can appeal to the courts for “extreme hardship,” and several millions will be legalized over time because their U.S.-born children can gain them legalization. Amnesty is unfair, and isn’t necessary. And it’s not a good first step down the path to citizenship.

— Matthew Spalding is the director of the Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation.