We already have a guest worker program.
Posted on 05/15/2006 2:59:55 PM PDT by notes2005
WASHINGTON - President Bush is to order as many as 6,000 National Guard troops to increase enforcement at the Mexican border, part of a $1.9 billion drive to tighten security and win conservative backing in Congress for a broad election-year overhaul of the nation's tattered immigration laws.
"We do not yet have full control of the border and I am determined to change that," Bush is expected to say in remarks prepared for a prime-time speech from the Oval Office.
The speech will come as the Senate begins work on legislation to strengthen border security, authorize new guest worker programs and give an eventual chance at citizenship to most of the estimated 12 million people already living illegally in the United States.
"Tonight I am calling on Congress to provide funding for dramatic improvements in manpower and technology at the border," Bush is expected to say.
Congressional officials who were briefed in advance of the speech said the president would ask Congress to increase the number of Border Patrol agents and to support construction of additional facilities to detain illegal immigrants. They said the National Guard troops would not be involved in law enforcement, but would take support jobs currently held by federal agents, freeing them for front-line duty.
On citizenship, the White House told congressional officials the president planned to say that illegal immigrants, required to stand in line behind legal immigrants applying to become citizens, are not being granted amnesty.
Bush's plan to use National Guard troops at the border ran into criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.
"The National Guard already is stretched to the limit by repeated tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as from providing disaster assistance in their own states," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass., though he commended Bush for "courage and leadership" in weighing in on the immigration debate.
Bush was to say the nation has expanded the Border Patrol from about 9,000 to 12,000 agents during his presidency and has sent home about 6 million people entering the United States illegally. Still, he would add, that has not been enough.
"We will fix the problems created by illegal immigration and we will deliver a system that is secure, orderly and fair," the president was to say.
He would also call for enactment of a guest worker program to allow immigrants to take low-paying jobs, and he was to say employers must be held to account for hiring illegal immigrants. He was to say also that a tamper-proof identification card for workers would "leave employers with no excuse" for violating the law.
Right on!!!!
I'm with you.
Funding is the point. Anybody who wants something done needs to procure funding. The full solution will cost $250 billion first year, but Congress won't go for that. So, expect something less. Much less.
Nice Attitude? Screw that! In Los Angeles, we are DROWNING in illegals, and the president has ignored the problem for his entire term in office. When two border patrol agents made 2 arrests in Southern California of car loads of illegals, he suspended the agents, threatened their expulsion, and sent his representatives to apologize to the illegals.
Our hospitals, schools, and social welfare system in southern California are overrun with illegals and WE are forced to pay for them. His administration has done its best to deny any federal help to the residents of California for repayment of our own tax dollars to pay for this MESS!
You WANT ATTITUDE buster!? I'll give you some F*****G ATTITUDE!!!
Is this DU?!
A cynic would interpret this statement as saying that illegal aliens would be given a path to citizenship, just not an "automatic" one. This is no time for wiggle-room words, I would think.
Bush was to say = Bush was {expected | predicted } to say
The person who put that in the speech should be relieved of that duty
The dems are going to use that to no end for the mid terms
Five years after 9/11 and the boarders are not under control?????
See post #15.
oops. I meant 24.
Still past tense.
Oh I have no doubt that there will be a path to citizenship, which to me = AMNESTY.
If you break our laws in the first place, why be given any chance (automatic or otherwise) for something as valuable as American citizenship.
I don't think I am going to like what I hear tonight.
I see it.
It's my post to you.
What's your point?
What, a legal citizen and resident of California?
We already have a guest worker program.
Nachum I'm on your side in regards to the border but there is no need for the name calling. This is not the DU.
Hey why complain? I'm glad they released the Reader's Digest version; Now I definitely don't need to bother watching him read it. He's not that great a reader anyway.
Red Sox at Camden Yard.
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