“Illegal Immigration first (border fence, beef-up of INS and DEA); deportation roundup second; kicking out illegal Kenyan nationals third.”
Worth repeating. Is there some part of their oath of office that requires Presidents to refuse to enforce the immigration laws? How did we get two in a row like this?
GWB didn’t have a clear mandate from the 2000 election; ideally, he’d have used 9/11 to get the border fence built, but wouldn’t have been able to get the votes for that one, since the mass-murdering hijackers were 100 per cent Arabs. After the 2002 midterm elections, he had a decent nominal majority in both houses, and 2004 was successful as a policy referendum. But he also has an uncanny sense of which fights he can win and which victories will give him the greatest advantage, and the Demwits and politicians of southernmost states were probably going to oppose building a fence; the former would oppose it because it would give them a wedge issue at the ballot box, the latter because all politics is local. :’(