Bush urges Congress on immigration

WASHINGTON — President Bush urged Congress today to find a middle ground between mass deportation or instant U.S. citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already living in America.

Bush's radio message was the third time this week he has spoken out about immigration.

On Monday, in a televised address from the Oval Office, Bush said he would order as many as 6,000 National Guard troops to secure the U.S. border with Mexico, and urged Congress to give millions of illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship.

Bush said the National Guard troops would fill in temporarily while the nation's Border Patrol is expanded. He asked Congress to add 6,000 more Border Patrol agents by the end of his presidency and add 6,700 more beds so illegal immigrants can be detained while waiting for hearings.

However, Homeland Security Department Inspector General Richard L. Skinner said in a report Friday that the administration hadn't budgeted enough, and that it will take nearly 35,000 more jail beds to detain all high-risk aliens.

"This week I asked Congress to provide funding for dramatic improvements in manpower and technology at the border," Bush said Saturday. "We'll hire thousands more Border Patrol agents. And to help these agents do their jobs, we will deploy advanced technologies such as high-tech fences in urban areas, infrared cameras and unmanned aerial vehicles."

Many congressional Republicans said they supported Bush's plan to use National Guard troops at the border. But he ran into criticism from some border state governors, Democrats and some other Republicans.

In the Democratic radio response, Rep. Mike Honda of California said Bush should denounce the approach of House Republicans, who won passage of a tough immigration bill that would erect fences along the Mexican border and treat people who sneak across as felons to be deported.

"The president's public relations campaign won't get the job done," Honda said about the proposals the president announced Monday. "As the Senate continues to consider comprehensive immigration reform, the president needs to stand up to the far right, and take a stand on the details of the bill before them."

On Thursday, the president traveled to Arizona to tour an unfortified section of the border in the desert. He endorsed using fences and other barriers to cut down on illegal crossings. The Senate on Wednesday voted to put 370 miles of fences on the border.

"To secure our border we must create a temporary worker program that provides foreign workers a legal and orderly way to enter our country for a limited period of time," Bush said.

Bush wants an immigration bill that pairs up better security on the border with a guest worker program.

He faces opposition from conservative Republicans, particularly in the House, who prefer a get-tough approach and largely oppose a guest worker program — something they view as giving amnesty to criminals.

The Senate, meanwhile, is working on broad legislation that largely answers Bush's call. It includes measures to tighten control of the borders, creates a guest worker program and offers a path to citizenship to many, but not all, illegal immigrants in the nation.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., an ardent opponent of the Senate bill, conceded Friday that the measure is likely to pass next week. "The Senate should be ashamed of itself," he said. But he also predicted that it won't become law unless House and Senate negotiators rewrite it.

In addition to a guest worker program, Bush said employers need to be held accountable for the workers they hire by creating a better system for verifying documents and work eligibility. The president said the system should include a tamperproof identification card for every legal foreign worker.

"The card would help us enforce the law and leave employers with no excuse for breaking it," he said. "And by making it harder for illegal immigrants to find work in our country, we would discourage people from crossing the border illegally in the first place."

That doesn't, however, resolve the status of millions of illegal immigrants already living in America. Bush said they should not be given an automatic path to citizenship.

"Illegal immigrants who have roots in our country and want to stay should have to pay a meaningful penalty, pay their taxes, learn English and work in a job for a number of years," Bush said.

Some people think any proposal short of mass deportation is amnesty. I disagree. There's a rational middle ground between automatic citizenship for every illegal immigrant and a program of mass deportation. Illegal immigrants who have roots in our country and want to stay should have to pay a meaningful penalty, pay their taxes, learn English, and work in a job for a number of years.

"work in a job for a number of years"? At what wage?

After making a call, I was wrong about the 55 age. The age is the same for citizens. Each country can decide how this gets done. Having dealt with tax law in the UK, most of our treaties with them appear to be based on a benefit-minus basis. THe benefit being received is reduced by the amount being recieved in the non-host country first. And I didn't intend or believe I said that it was a free giveaway since the benefits are only paid to those immigrants (legal or illegal) who actually paid into the system.

But there are actually millions of people getting freebies from Social Security. Did you know that a big chunk of the retirement population brought here under 'extended family' applications for citizenship or visas are retirement age family of existing 'anchor babies' who then get to apply for Social Security? Seems wrong? Yes. But Medicaid will cover them and they can get free government services in states like CA where the political class refuses acknowledge that citizenship it a different class than 'resident.'

"President Bush urged Congress today to find a middle ground between mass deportation or instant U.S. citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already living in America."

Middle ground? Would that be - deport 6 million, keep 6 million? How come the middle ground between deportation and 'instant US citizenship' is ... delayed US citizenship. that is more 90/10 than 50/50...

Anyone who stands up and says "it must include legalization/amnesty or nothing at all" is a real opponent of immigration law reform. We can only clean up this mess gradually, but NOT repeating the amnesty/legalization mistake is the first and most important rule to follow in whatever legislation we craft.

We got into this mess because of a failed amnesty in 1986 and 20 years of non-enforcement of immigration law. The only way out of this hole, in terms of both politics and policy, is a gradual, step-at-a-time approach to recover to a position of lawful immigration.

A TRUE compromise would NOT include amnesty/legalization at all, but would secure the border, get employment verification working 100%, and create enough legal avenues for employment-sponsored immigration so we can wean employers off illegal immigrant labor.

Let that be the 'compromise' from the House and Senate - leaving out the third rail of legalizing millions of illegal immigrants - and put it up for a vote in both houses. The only political victory for the GOP can be if we are united, and most conservative Republicans will never support a massive amnesty. Never. So drop it. Quit trying to 'compromise' around a Kennedy bill that gets a 'yes' vote from Schumer and "no" votes from 40 GOP Senators, and get serious about writing legislation that conservatives can rally around.

"The president has supported building a wall for over a year now, so if you have problems with the fact that a wall hasn't been built, take it up with Congress. He supported Sensenbrenner's suggestion to build a 700 mile wall, but Congress rejected it. Bush even signed legislation which funded the wall."

Then why isnt it built? Then why does the President insist on 'comprehensive' reform with amnesty, instead of standing upand saying "We can do the border security this year and comprehensive reform next year, HR 4437 is acceptable, that will work too..." He didnt say it in his speech and it was very wrong of him not to.

It would work too, if the President had more seriousness about this issue.

Also, I'm sure the Bush critics are going to reel out the stats on Bush's non-enforcement at ICE and his budget that underfunded BorderPatrol, or the internal memos in the BP about how coyotes and drug smugglers are not getting prosecuted and about how the bed needed to end catch-and-release are 10X the number of beds they are applying it to, etc etc ...

"As an aside, although there are complaints that under this administration, employer fines have decreased for hiring illegal immigration, what seems to have gone unnoticed by the border hysterics is that it's because what was once a fine is now a CRIME."

There are 10 million illegal immigrants in this country. Outside of the border area arrests, how many deportations occured in the last year? So what is the likelihood of deportation?

"It is particularly disheartening to see the effect of talk of amnesty has on legal immigrants. Many have told me that they spent over 10 years, legally obtaining citizenship. Now I looks to them, like the Senate and the president are making a mockery of their efforts."

YES.
Amnesty is a slap in the face to legal immigrants.

"President Bush urged Congress today to find a middle ground between mass deportation or instant U.S. citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already living in America. "

Dubya, I have a middle ground. We deport some today, some tomorrow, and keep it up until they are all gone.

Send your congrersscritter a brick to let him/her know where you stand on illegal invaders and people who want to profit from them.

"So why is he 5 years late in starting to talk about a fence?"

Obviously, this is political posturing to drive to tamp down the conservative anger over the CIRA bill.

"Where were the National Guard 5 years ago."

It was certainly a missed opportunity NOT to secure the borders post 9/11.

"Why now is he talking about a 'path to citizenship'."

Because he never ever intended to deport them, as that would be too cruel, and the original idea of them being 'guest workers' seemed to not get enough oomph.
La Raza and the libs demand amnesty/legalization-to-citizenship as the price of support of something, so Bush went Liberal on us to craft a RINO-Democrat bill. This is why Bush met with Reid and McCain but *not* Sen Cornyn, the conservative point-man in the Judiciary committee who is on top of most of these issues, and has his own, more conservative approach with Sen Kyl.

Bush should have pushed on Cornyn-Kyl or HR4437.
There is not really a middle. There is the very liberal CIRA bill (calling it a 'compromise' is pathetic joke). and there is the House HR4437. Secure the borders.
The middle ground would be a non-amnesty bill that gave us enforcement and a new visa for temp. workers.

"And most of all: What benefit to conservatives to have 12 million new Democrat voters?"

We get to write them off as 'dependents' on our taxes? :-/

"Bush:..., but approval would not be automatic, and they will have to wait in line behind those who played by the rules and followed the law."

Lawrence Lindsay debunked this.

Dont be fooled. the CIRA bill is very liberal and very dangerous. Bush is showing that he cannot be trusted, as he is saying things (like "temporary guest worker") that are NOT TRUE and which his own White House is helping define as something other than what is advertised...

Read this:

http://freedomstruth.blogspot.com/2006/05/real-temporary-guest-worker-program.html

And this:
http://freedomstruth.blogspot.com/

Employers of illegals have to certify they tried to find Americans to fill the jobs. Employers are not trying to find Americans to fill the jobs. A friend of mine told me that last week she went to a temporary service looking for employment. She was there for several hours. During that time at least 5 American citizens walked in inquiring about a job at a local factory that is hiring. Each of them was told that they have no employment for them at the time. During the time she was at the agency at least 12 Mexicans walked in and were told to get on a bus that was parked out back and they were to be transported to the very company that the 5 citizens were inquiring about. Most likely most or all of the Mexicans transported to the company were illegals, since we have never had many of them in this area. Anyone who believes that illegals are doing the work Americans won't do are naive. They are here in great numbers taking jobs that American citizens will do and need badly.

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