...BUMP!
Good read by Bob Barr of American Conservative Union Foundation.. He wrote this on april 12.. I would love to hear what he thinks now that GWB gave his speech..
Bob Barr
Bush Gives Immigration Wink and Nod
The Atlantic Journal-Constitution
April 12, 2006
"Next time the Department of Justice publishes its annual index of crime statistics, you might want to look up how many “uninvited visitor” incidents there have been compared to previous years. You might also want to check how many automobile owners had their vehicles “involuntarily borrowed” in the past year. Oh, you can’t find those statistics? Well, look under “burglary” and “vehicle theft” and you’ll find the information you’re looking for.
Using soft words to describe events, actions or persons in order to disguise their true nature is becoming a well-honed art among politicians in Washington and across the country, and nowhere more apparent than in efforts by the administration of President Bush and its supporters to sugarcoat the crisis of illegal immigration in and into the United States.
We have a president whose entire five years-plus term in the Oval Office has been defined by stressing the importance of national security and the need for ever stricter and broader criminal laws to enhance security, but who cannot bring himself to utter the term “illegal alien” when discussing the veritable flood of people unlawfully entering our country from Mexico. This blind spot the size of the Lone Star State enables Bush to see nothing more nettlesome than a parade of “undocumented workers,” many of whom perhaps just forgot their “documentation” at home when they kissed the wife and kids goodbye that morning as they headed off for a day at the office.
The president has spoken at length recently, in some of his rambling monologues that pass for question-and-answer sessions, of the need to “secure our borders.” But he still cannot recognize the fundamental problem — a complete breakdown of respect for immigration laws in this country prompted by an utter failure to enforce those laws against illegal aliens and those who hire them.
Were this an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, Bush would not pass his first session, which requires participants to take the first step in rehabilitation, which is recognizing the problem for what it is and not sugarcoating it.
Instead, the president bogs himself down in trying to avoid recognizing the problem by pontificating about protecting the “decency” of America and reminding us repeatedly that the most important thing we are is a “nation of immigrants.” The decency about which Bush speaks has nothing to do with the decency of protecting the sovereignty of the nation his oath of office requires him to protect.
Deflecting and obfuscating the immigration debate by simply parroting the historical fact that America’s population growth in its earlier decades was largely the result of external migration does nothing to address the very real and current problem.
Besides, weren’t we taught in school that, first and foremost, America is a “nation of laws?” In the president’s world, in which “amnesty” has transmogrified into “guest worker,” apparently those of us who believe that “first, let’s enforce our laws” are indecent and callous.
Of course, Bush is not alone in striving to paint over the illegal immigration debate with pleasing soft words such as “decency,” “compassion” and “guest worker.” Many in the moribund U.S. Senate — whose courageous membership left town last Friday for another recess (this one, two weeks long and chock full of foreign junkets) without passing any border security or immigration reform legislation, despite extensively debating the dire need for such action – similarly eschew the use of real words to describe this crisis of sovereignty facing America. And now, no less a luminary than California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has entered the fray, showing himself to be a metro male with the best of what Washington has to offer.
In a commentary piece appearing Monday in The Wall Street Journal, the former actor wrote eloquently of “compassion” for immigrants, apparently all of whom in the guv’s eyes are “good people.” While repeatedly admonishing the Congress to “get serious” about the problem, Schwarzenegger could never once in the article bring himself to use the “i” word — “illegal” — to describe the millions of aliens in his state and across the other 49 who flouted and continue to flout our immigration laws.
There is one person in Congress, however, who sees this problem for what it is and is proposing a real solution — House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.). Whether his brand of realism and tough talk will triumph over the obfuscation and double talk that permeates so much of the debate these days, however, is very much an open question."
Mr. Barr occupies the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union Foundation.
Minuteman's Simcox: Bush Speech 'Sad, Disappointing'
NewsMax.com ^ | May 16, 2006 | Dave Eberhart
Posted on 05/16/2006 1:41:14 PM EDT by NewJerseyJoe
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1633186/posts
Good comments by Barr.
Good column by Barr. Today I must have read a hundred of them and not one showed support for amnesty or "comprehensive" reform. The Senate must be living in another universe.
I agree I'd like to hear his take now. I'd just add to the above that many in MSM have a part in this too. They have been complicit even today sans a few.
Excellent read. Thank you.