Hayworth Says Only American People Can Halt Bush's Guest-Worker Plan

HumanEventsOnline.com ^ | Feb 7, 2006 | Robert B. Bluey

[boryeulb]

With the Senate about to finally address immigration reform and President Bush renewing his call for a guest-worker program in last week’s State of the Union, Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R.-Ariz.) tells HUMAN EVENTS he foresees a troubling scenario that will result in an amnesty plan being “shoved down the throats” of the American people.

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Hayworth, author of the new book Whatever It Takes: Illegal Immigration, Border Security, and the War on Terror, said Senate Republicans are poised to tinker with an already weak House immigration reform bill and bow to Bush’s demands to include a guest-worker plan.

In an exclusive interview with HUMAN EVENTS, Hayworth said, “I have every belief that the Senate will take the vehicle the House sends them, will end up passing a guest-worker/amnesty plan, and that will be sent back to the House and shoved down the throats of the American people—unless the people wake up right now and say ‘no.’”

Hayworth’s book outlines the problems facing the United States as a result of its porous border with Mexico (including the threat of another terrorist attack). He also offers solutions, some of which he discussed with HUMAN EVENTS.

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What makes immigration reform so important for you personally?

One thing we understand about the nature of this problem is that is that is transcends all others—our national security, our economic security, the future of Social Security—all of these issues—healthcare, education—all tie into this issue. The book, in a sense, holds a mirror up to America.

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What inspired you to put this on paper and to write a book about illegal immigration?

I think there are two primary reasons: First, and most importantly, to win the political argument against a guest-worker program, that I think would reward law-breaking and lead to more illegal immigration; and secondly, this book is a wake-up call. It is to sound the alarm to the American people that unless they coalesce and make their voices heard in Washington, a lot of politicians and a lot of special interests will shove a guest-worker plan right down their throats.

Make no mistake about it, this guest-worker program is driven by the most craven and cynical special interests. Big Business believes it gets an almost endless supply of cheap labor. The left believes it gets a source of cheap votes. And the American people get a huge bill to pay in terms of entitlements that people, quite frankly, are not entitled to. We’ve just got to stop this because guest worker equals amnesty equals surrender. It is a rip-off that must be prevented at all costs.

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How do things stand now in Congress on immigration reform and what do you expect the Senate to do in terms of acting on the House bill that was passed in December?

There’s no way to sugarcoat it—the House bill was just so much holiday window dressing. The fundamental problem is this: When it comes to illegal immigration, Washington views this as a political problem to be managed, instead of an invasion to be stopped. That’s the fundamental problem.

Because they look at it as a political problem to be managed instead of an invasion to be stopped, you got a bill that, essentially, was nibbling around the edges—and, yes, there was that celebrated amendment about the fence, but that was exception and not the rule. By and large, you got a lot of nibbling around the edges. And instead of enforcement first, basically the House bill is: enforcement, maybe, if we can get the Senate to go along, and perhaps we will acquiesce to the President’s priorities.

You don’t have to parse the words with this President. He’s made it very clear where he stands on this issue. He visited Tucson in the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I’m paraphrasing him, he said to those gathered there that proponents of stronger enforcement must understand that it can only come with a guest-worker program. That type of equation is just the wrong way to go.

I have every belief that the Senate will take the vehicle the House sends them, will end up passing a guest-worker/amnesty plan, and that will be sent back to the House and shoved down the throats of the American people—unless the people wake up right now and say “no.”

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In terms of some of the ideas you outline in the book—you talk about employers and the problems that are posed there and some of the issues involved with that, and as you mentioned, you have this whole idea of the fence. What do you think are the most realistic ideas that can get through the Congress and would be acceptable to President Bush?

Again, quite candidly, I don’t know, given the current mindset of the White House and certain key members of the Senate, any notion of enforcement-first—other than poll-driven comments that appear to be verbal tranquilizers really translate into action. I just have to be candid about it.

I have a great deal of respect for our President, a great deal of admiration for him. In fact, it’s been said, on nine out of 10 issues he has no stronger ally in the Congress than J.D. Hayworth. But on this issue, there is a profound disagreement. So I don’t know if in good faith I can say to you what would be acceptable to the President. With due respect to the presidency, I think the question ought to be: What is acceptable to the American people? And operating from that template, we need to have enforcement first.

What do I mean by that? I mean literally a one-two punch: stronger border enforcement, including a military presence, on our border; and the advent and the usage of the high-tech abilities we have for continuous surveillance of our vast borders. But simultaneously, interior enforcement—holding businesses accountable and holding illegals accountable for breaking the law.

Because what is being propagated by the so-called cheap labor crowd is this notion that everyone who crosses our border is only here to look for a job. Nothing could be further from the truth. And there is an effort underfoot to excuse illegal behavior. The question is often posed to me: If these people are just here working hard, what’s wrong?

Here’s the problem: Chances are they have used false documents. We know that fraudulent use of a Social Security number is a felony. And we have to get tough on illegals and those who knowingly hire illegals. And we have to put in place mechanisms, as I outlined in my enforcement-first bill, that ends the bureaucratic stove piping, that ends the absurdity of the Social Security Administration writing employers to say these numbers don’t match up, but don’t you take any action, you could open yourself up to an immigration lawsuit.

Instead of the Social Security Administration playing a store-front lawyer, the Social Security Administration should do the job it is supposed to do. The fraudulent numbers, and those utilizing them, that information should be shared with the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. But instead of utilizing information literally at Uncle Sam’s fingertips, Uncle Sam has had his hands tied and that information stove piped and taken away.

We need to end the gaming of the system. We need to return to the original intent of the 14th Amendment, what Sen. Howard advanced when he spoke about that amendment when he proposed it on the floor of the Senate, that sadly has been changed drastically through court interpretations in the 20th century. And we have to understand that by turning off the magnet and by putting stricter controls on benefits, we will offer a powerful disincentive to those who come here illegally.

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You outline all of this in detail in the book, and you go through point-by-point information that people probably wouldn’t necessarily know about or have at their fingertips. You say the American people need to wake up. Is your book the vehicle that you think will be able to do that?

I think this book serves as the wake-up call. I think it could be a rallying point. When readers pick this book up, and after they read Sean Hannity’s introduction, they read chapter one, “Overrun,” and in one place there is a litany of real-time experiences with the abuses of our system by illegals; with the abuses of our system by business interests; with the abuses of our system by left-wing grievance-mongers, all too eager to pander in the name of political correctness.

I believe it outlines the problem and the dimensions of the problem. But we don’t leave it there. We offer tangible solutions that were in my enforcement-first bill that sadly were watered down into an enforcement-maybe bill in the House of Representatives—a bill I, in good conscience, could not case a vote in favor of.

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You come from a border state and your two senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl, are on different sides of the debate, at least it seems. Each has a separate bill in the Senate. Give me a rundown of both of those, and if those aren’t good enough, what the problem is with each.

With both of those bills, and rather than go through a litany of my criticisms of the bills, let me step back and say it this way. Unless and until you enforce existing laws, there is no incentive for any new approach to work. Because if people do not obey existing laws, and if the government refuses to enforce existing laws, what makes us think any new laws are going to be either enforced or obeyed?

I have a great deal of respect for my colleagues in the Senate, but in the final analysis, that fundamental question fails to be addressed. That is the first and primary fault line. Now I could go through a litany, and goodness knows if either of those plans advances in the Senate I’ll be happy to do that, but in the final analysis, the first question remains the last question remains the constant question: If people are not obeying existing laws, if the government fails to enforce existing laws, what on earth makes us think any new laws would either be enforced or observed?

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Do you think since 9/11 the situation has improved or worsened? Obviously, in that time we’ve seen a lot more attention paid to the issue, but has any impact really been made?

The most disappointing, and in a sense the most troubling aspect of this entire question, is the pronouncement by the secretary of Homeland Security that we could have operational control of the borders within five years.

Now, just stop and think about that for a second. He made that announcement in late 2005 that it was his goal and his belief that the American nation could have operational control of its borders within five years. That means 2011—10 years after the brutal attack on our homeland in 2001.

And I think each American, as we pause for reflection on that, I don’t believe anyone in their wildest nightmare, could believe that the bureaucrat-laden language of long-term goals would include security our border 10 years after we were attacked. That is inexcusable, it is unconscionable, and it is the wrong approach for the wrong reasons at the wrong time in our history.

It brings me pleasure to say that, but one of my jobs is not simply rally around the administration, but as a member of the United States Congress, regardless of partisan label, if something’s wrong—if we’re mired in what political scientists call bureaucratic inertia, what we just have to call inaction—it is highly inappropriate and it is very dangerous.

Accordingly, I don’t believe the progress has been made that should have been made—both reflective of a nation on a war footing and realistically addressing the nature of the threats we confront here in the United States.

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How much of an impact does Big Business have on the Bush Administration and have on this debate because of their desire to have cheap labor?

I think you see interests that I would consider traditional allies. The United States Chamber of Commerce, the agri-jobs group, the service industries are just bound and determined that they want to have what is in effect corporate welfare—a permanent subsidy to absorb their costs of doing business by bringing people in and creating a new status of worker that essentially would be paid for by the taxpayers of the United States to facilitate a new American caste system or a permanent underclass.

That is what I believe, quite frankly, is a major part of the problem in Washington and why so many of my congressional colleagues view this as a political problem to be managed or finessed rather than a threat to be confronted or an invasion to be stopped. And there’s been no secret about this. The White House went to work, it was first reported in the Los Angeles Times, that a coalition of border security and economic security hired Dick Armey, the former Republican leader, and Cal Dooley, a former Democrat member of Congress from the agricultural areas of central California, and they’re out pushing the notion of a guest worker.

The battle has been joined, and the President, to his credit, does not engage in parsing of words, but he has decided that a guest-worker program is the prescription he wants to follow. And I politely but profoundly disagree.

[Sterco]

Did anybody tell you that the employee verification will take 5 years to implement?

Ask your friends in Greasy Colorado how pleasant life is? We have had a belly full of your illegal entry into our territory, Vaya Casa. I mean really!!!

[B4Ranch]

"Your love of President Bush is seriously eroding your judgement."

There's a long, long difference between love and adoration. The Raving Nutcake holds Bush higher than Muslims hold Mohammed.

[axes_of_weezles]

That's right. Your bottom better get across the line if your not a citizen.

[Ben Ficklin]

Whatever you do, don't go beserko over the illegals, you might end up in jail. For a long time.

[B4Ranch]

House bill funds Guard border duty (AZ Gets IT)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1573931/posts

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

a fence will prove 1) expensive and 2) useless.

Oh come now. What's a couple of billion? That's how much a border fence would cost. $2 billion ain't nothing. A water droplet in the Pacific.

And it would not be "useless." A strong border fence with round-the-clock surveillance would decrease illegal immigration by over 90%.

Key among these is strong enforcement actions on businesses who hire them (knowlingly OR unknowingly). The owners of said businesses should face stiff fines AND prison time.

You have to look at the root of the problem. Why are businesses paying illegals under the table? Blame the tax code. Blame the suffocating cost of doing business in America. Running a business is a nightmare now. Although I disagree with what these businesses are doing, I empathize with their predicament.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

but a fence by itself will help nothing. The traffic will simply move to other areas of the border.

To where? Will illegals raft through the Gulf of Mexico and come ashore or what?

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Mexico should be rolling in prosperity. They got a wonderful climate, oil, and natural resources up the wazoo. Plus their citizens are hard-working and family-oriented. All they need is a good dose of capitalism from an uncorruptable leader who's willing to roll up his/her sleeves and get the job done.

[Serenissima Venezia]

Bush's Guest Worker Program = Amnesty

I have to agree. Bush's plan reward the illegals - it doesn't do a thing to discourage criminal behavior or to reward those that have done things the right way.

A 'guest' is someone that I invite to my home willingly, know who they are, and can ask them to leave. The invaders are more like someone who shows up at my house in the middle of the night and has taken over my spare room and been raiding my refrigerator without my consent. And refuses to leave so that I end up leaving my house to find a new place to live. (Which is why I am intent on leaving California ASAP!)

[NewRomeTacitus]

The Senate backed away from its 2004 pledge to hire 2,000 more Border Patrol agents and fund 8,000 new detention beds for illegal aliens in fiscal 2006. The intelligence overhaul bill passed by Congress and signed into law in last December called for 2,000 new agents and 8,000 new detention beds each year for the next five years in order to meet the threat posed by illegal aliens. But in mid-July, the Senate voted on amendments to the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, providing funds for only 1,000 more agents and 2,240 more detention beds in fiscal 2006.

At the President's request.

Those measures are like installing one or two termite modules around a six acre lot. We don't see exterminators indulging in such purposely weak foolishness and crying "We did our best!" after the structures fall down.

By the way, if your septic tank is clogged I've got a line on a ferocious all-natural remedy: a mammalian species that finds no excrement too dense or filthy to be navigated. Handy for that one talent, Demorino Publictraitoris has the unfortunate tendency to spread mental disease and other maladies until the surrounding environment is rendered uninhabitable by cognizant wage-earners. These vile creatures must be handled by qualified technicians who can shut out the auditory stimuli they emit whenever one or more humans congregate without protection or prior experience. Symptoms of exposure may include dizziness, darkening of visual perception and lightness of wallet. Should you or anyone you know suffer from any of these symptoms re-read the Constitution and withhold enabling contributions to the disease immediately.

And you know the President is charged with our defense. If he's too compromised (corrupt) to do so we need one who will discharge that duty without hesitation. Hayworth, Tancredo, Ginry or 70 others would do better - and would do it without sucking up to the Clintons and Kennedys (which is totally inexcusable).

Of course, Bush bashers don't want to address that fact either.

So like the enemies of freedom who freely apply labels like "racist" to those who disagree with their view. Not that I haven't called communist and socialist tools just that when trying to shove "political correctness" down my throat. I just see referring to people as "Bush Bashers" as if the man is beyond criticism or somehow (heaven help us) above the laws we commoners knuckle under is dangerously close to putting a personality above the government. Our government. It's ours in word if not in action and present reality.

[NewRomeTacitus]

Raving Nutter: IT'S A DEAD HORSE, PEOPLE, YOU CAN STOP BEATING IT NOW!

Reaganwuzthebest: Tell that to Bush. He's just proposed $247 million dollars in the budget for a new massive guest worker/amnesty program so apparently he's anticipating something you believe is a dead horse.

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My email from FAIR:

FROM THE DESK OF THE PRESIDENT RE: President's Budget Spends More for Guest Workers than Worksite Enforcement

Yesterday the Bush Administration issued its budget request for the upcoming fiscal year that will begin on October 1. In it he has asked Congress to approve $247 million to implement a guest worker amnesty program that is strongly opposed by many members of Congress. This represents nearly $100 million more than he proposed for worksite enforcement and expansion of the voluntary worker verification system combined.

For the border patrol, who work to secure our porous borders, the President asked for funding to support only 1,500 new border patrol agents in the fiscal year that begins next October. While this sounds significant, this number is 500 border patrol agents less than authorized in the intelligence overhaul legislation enacted into law well over a year ago and for the two fiscal years covered since enactment of that law it is a Border Patrol shortfall of 1,000 officers.

You and I know that over the last few months the President has made a point of calling for tougher actions to control our borders and enforce laws against illegal immigration. I'm sure you have doubted the President's sincerity just as I have, fearing that the new tough talk would disappear once he got his guest worker amnesty program through the Congress. Well we were wrong. The President has not waited for Congressional approval before putting on full display his real intentions to put enforcement in the back seat and his more passionate desire for a guest worker amnesty proposal behind the wheel. You and I get run over by the bus.

How Congress will respond to this budget remains to be seen. The House is already on record passing tough enforcement legislation without any guest worker program while the Senate will begin work on its version in early March. At this point the Senate is expected to be far more receptive to the President's proposals than the House.

We intend to do everything we can here in Washington, D.C. to prevent passage of a guest worker amnesty program of any description. We need your full and active participation to convince Congress that amnesty has been tried and failed in the past and that an open-ended guest worker program will drive another stake in the heart of American middle and lower income workers.

Dan Stein
President

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It's gut time and every call, fax or letter will make a dent. I, for one, would rather be able to look back and be able to say I made an effort rather than look stupid when the younger people ask what did I do to help prevent catastrophe. Five minutes of your time may sway history. - NRT

[rcocean]

I heard Hayworth on the Hugh Hewitt show.

I thought did very well.

Hewitt on the other hand is a complete RINO on the issue of illegal immigration. He actually implied anyone who didn't like illegal immigration was a "Nativist". NO doubt Hugh will be soon be calling people "Racists" if the issue heats up.

[Wonder Warthog]

"The "Wall" is enough of a symbol that the majority of the Mexican "Peons" will pay heed and stay home."

Sorry, but I disagree. The only thing that will stop them from coming here is to make it impossible for them to earn a living, and to make it highly likely that they will be caught and deported if the do manage to find a job in the "underground economy". THEN they'll stay home.

[Wonder Warthog]

"A strong border fence with round-the-clock surveillance would decrease illegal immigration by over 90%."

For a short while. Then new modes of "coyoteing" would be developed, and the level would be back up.

No. The ONLY thing that will deter them is to make if extremely difficult to make a living, and to increase the probability that they will be found and deported.

The "fence" is a fake panacea.

"You have to look at the root of the problem. Why are businesses paying illegals under the table? Blame the tax code. Blame the suffocating cost of doing business in America. Running a business is a nightmare now. Although I disagree with what these businesses are doing, I empathize with their predicament."

Bullshit. MOST businesses succeed without hiring illegal immmigrants. The ONLY reason businesses do so is pure greed, which is why the penalties should be raised to the point that any possible profit will "disappear" if the business is found to be hiring illegals.

[Wonder Warthog]

"To where? Will illegals raft through the Gulf of Mexico and come ashore or what?"

Some of them (though not rafts). "Coyotes" will simply shift from trucks and vans to boats. A lot if them will simply fly to Canada and cross the northern border (if they are paying coyotes hundreds and in some cases thousands of dollars, they can certainly afford a plane ticket to Canada).

NEVER underestimate human ingenuity.

[Wormwood]

Sorry, but I disagree. The only thing that will stop them from coming here is to make it impossible for them to earn a living, and to make it highly likely that they will be caught and deported if the do manage to find a job in the "underground economy". THEN they'll stay home.

Exactly.

Some businessmen are addicted to brown serfs. These men need to be punished.

[Trteamer]

Do you have a fence in your back yard?

[Wormwood]

Do you have a fence in your back yard?

Of course.

I believe a fence is a valuable component in border enforcement.

But getting one erected would be little more than a symbolic gesture if the demand for illegal scab labor is not addressed.

[houeto]

Come on Bush, get with the program. Close the borders, PERIOD!!! I am all for immigration, when it's LEGAL.

Ditto!

You reckon' ol' V. Fox has pictures of Bush with a ugly goat "Doing the job Americans won't do."?

[Dewy]

(GOP and there free trade and cheep labor)

No problem here.

I will withhold all GOP votes till they get the message. I've come to the conclusion all Bush and his band won't from the little people is a VOTE.