Bush straddled the fence while making no one happy. He tried to appease his conservative base by advocating stronger border security through deploying the National Guard to the Mexican border and enabling state and local law enforcement agencies to help with border patrol. On the other hand, he pushed the importance of creating a path for current illegal immigrants to gain citizenship and to initiate a guest worker program to satisfy moderate Republicans, many Democrats, and a significant portion of Latinos (who aren't unified on their stances on illegal immigrants). Further, he has to keep voters in Mexico in mind so that they don't elect a new president later this year who will have even less desire to stop illegal immigration than President Vicente Fox.
Personally, I thought Bush was not genuine about his desire to step up border security. It was merely a political necessity for him and his party. He would much rather push his guest worker program alone. However, he has brought this trouble upon himself. He -- along with at least the last couple of administrations and senators and representatives of both major political parties over the last couple of decades -- has not enforced standing immigration laws. Thus, Bush is in a political quagmire since he has allowed this problem to persist throughout his presidency. On the other hand, House Republicans are so stubborn on passing enforcement only legislation that many Democrats, most of the Senate, and the President wouldn't agree to that. Therefore, a stalemate is inevitable.
Despite Bush's follies, he has presented a compromise that should spark discussion. No one expects the President's proposal to stand as it is. However, he has extended an olive branch (reluctantly in my view) to spark action. Unfortunately, this is a mid-term election year, and there is an excellent chance that senators and representatives will back away from this issue because they don't want to burn themselves politically. What a bunch of wimps!
The other thing that bothered me tonight was the stubbornness of people who want to secure the borders before considering any other immigration reform. Granted, to truly control immigration we have to secure our borders. However, there's more going on now. For instance, there are currently millions of illegal immigrants here, and we have to deal with them. Somehow we have to coax them out of the shadows so that we can enforce our laws and grant them the dignity that they deserve.
We also have to plan ahead to accommodate future immigrants in our country, and the Bush Administration is trying to do that with its proposed guest worker program -- not that it is the only or best solution. Unfortunately, this administration isn't known for its future planning; look at Iraq. It is ludicrous to think, especially with hindsight, that to properly plan an invasion we would have had to completely ignore post-invasion plans. The fact that the administration poorly planned for the period after the initial invasion is one of the strongest critiques of those who are weary of and oppose the war. Likewise, we have to plan how we will handle immigration after we secure our borders and assimilate current illegal immigrants now. If we don't, we face a similar fate to the amnesty that we granted in the 1980s. There was no plan to deal with illegal immigrants who came after amnesty, and that lack of planning has created the debacle we are facing now. Future planning is essential no matter what we do. We should at least give the Bush Administration credit for finally incorporating some border security into their proposal and coupling it with a future plan.
Finally, in context of national security, I find it interesting that some people approve tamper resistant (I don't think we can truly achieve "tamper proof" status) biometric identification cards that will help ensure that documents required to obtain legal work are not forged. Currently, the NSA and its eavesdropping of domestic calls of and to suspected terrorists abroad and the compiling of a phone number based database for domestic calls are in the spotlight as the Senate must approve General Michael Hayden -- who ran the NSA as it operated both of these programs -- to the CIA director post. Many people are very concerned about privacy, and yet biometric cards also threaten privacy since the government will need to collect more personal data that it could use to wrongfully incriminate individuals later on. People who like biometric identification while opposing the NSA's phone call tracking programs have an interesting quandary to mull over.
President Bush's speech was disappointing, but for most of us who have followed the news all day and weekend, that was not a surprise. Despite this, we must give him credit for trying to address a complex issue.
rate
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 22
You can read it at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/15/AR2006051501139.html.
Thanks for reading!
My biggest concern about the so-called immigration reform proposals that include legalization of some or all of the 12 million illegal aliens already in this country is that such proposals will simply encourage more to illegals to come expecting that eventually they too will be legalized.
That lesson was learned with the adoption of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 ("IRCA"). That "immigration reform" legalized 4 million illegal aliens. IRCA has been a monumental failure. Twenty years later there 12 million illegal aliens to legalize. If some or all of these millions of illegals are now legalized, then we should only expect that twenty years from now we will have to consider granting amnesty to 36 million more new illegal aliens to legalize.
Agreed, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was a failure. I would argue that it mainly because we didn't plan for the obvious -- we would still have illegal immigrants. Hopefully, we get it right this time, but we are far away from a solution.
I'm not sure why someone who discusses border security cannot escape an anti-Hispanic label. However, many people who are pushing for greater border security are using national security as one of their most prominent argurments. The two issues are connected.
if we had ever faced a real threat of terrorism, the borders would have been patrolled three years ago. these crooks have been lying to us since 9/12/01. before, even.
You're right. Why didn't we step up border security after 9/11 when the entire country was so focused on security?
if we had ever faced a real threat of terrorism, the borders would have been patrolled three years ago. these crooks have been lying to us since 9/12/01. before, even.
also see: "On 9/23/02, Rumsfeld resurrected the linkage of Iraq to al-Qaeda, stating it is "accurate and not debatable." On 9/28/02, Bush stated his case more strongly than ever: "The danger to our country is grave and it is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. The regime has long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist groups, and there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq. This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year." to see why i say they've been lying the whole time.
greg schiller - whot say?
Politicians lie to us? That's just crazy talk!
Just joking...LOL.
Thanks for clarifying your point.
That is a valid observation. If we truly want to stymie illegal immigration, we must also punish those who unlawfully offer illegal immigrants jobs.
I agree that Bush has tried to start something, and that is hard to especially since it does split both parties. Bush cannot count on some of his party, but he has only has weak support from part of the Democrats.
I don't agree with you on the idea that the United States cannot sustain more people. However, any growth needs to be smart growth...
Smart growth? That would assume smart people or at least smart leaders wouldn't it. No.....we are not Brazil who started working on energy independence decades ago. This is the U.S. and we wait for crisis before we lift a finger. Lets look at where things stand today in just one area...water. As we speak, western states are at a point where they are ready to do battle in court over who gets how much water. Some of the most productive farm land in the word may have to start going without water. In Florida plans are being proposed to pump treated sewage into the aquifers to prevent salt water intrusion. We are using more then the earth can provide. There are two parts to this puzzle. The amount each person uses and the number of people using. This is just one aspect of the population crisis. The list goes on and on and to ignore the fact that we are beyond sustainability is to bury your head in the sand.
Thanks for bringing the environmental prespective into the discussion. You'll see that I disagree with you on the threat of overpopulation (but continue reading because I do think that we could do better in conservation efforts), but what you bring up is important nevertheless.
I must admit that I am not knowledgeable enough when it comes to the environmental issues facing the country to have a productive debate with you. You're right that water in the west is an issue; as a resident of Southwestern Utah I am aware that the Las Vegas area is trying to cyphen water from one of our aquifers to fuel its growth. At the same time I am aware of a proposed water pipeline that will bring water to the St. George area from Lake Powell to help the area grow as well. I understand that there are issues.
However, (I won't blame you for thinking that I'm shortsighted from here on), having lived in the West much of my life, there always has seemed to be a drought. Water conservation is always harped -- as it should be. Also, while understanding that we import a significant portion of our food supply, I have not ever sensed trouble in my short life of 24 years of any kind of pending famine. Yes, we did have to ask for tomatoes at many burger joints a few years ago because hurricanes wiped most of them out, but I only heard about that through a burger obsessed friend. Maybe the mainstream media didn't mention it when I was watching. Either way, I admittably feel complacent about the dangers of overpopulation in the United States anytime soon.
Having said that, I do think it is important to that we as a society need to become more responsible stewards of the environment. I need to take shorter showers... What I meant by "smart growth" was that we should try to encourage people to spread out a bit more when they move. We don't need heavy population concentrations or growth rates in the Southwest where water is an issue. East Texas seemed to have plenty of water when I lived in the Houston area. Why can't we encourage more people to move there instead of the Southwest? Both places are hot. Regardless of migration and growth patterns, we do need to conserve more. From my perspective the problems like water supplies are distributional in nature. The Southwest typically doesn't have enough while the Southeast typically has more than it needs. Concerning the farmland, is the Southeast as productive as the Southwest? You might have me on that.
How's that for a response? I feel that we could do better as stewards of the environment, but at the same time I don't see a major threat of over population.
I enjoyed the response. Water is an easy one as its been getting a lot of attention in recent years but it is only one of the many issues effected by population. I am not a scientist, but many people who are have come to the conclusion that the "American Way of Life" is destructive and not sustainable. Those that haven't seem stuck on emotional or religious issues that prevent them from seeing the picture clearly. You are correct that behavior modification is important. We could use less water, we could drive more fuel efficent cars, we could take public transportation, we could not allow such consentration of population or we could mandate it for transportation efficiencies and habitat preservation. The list goes on and on but no matter what you do population growth at the rate that is project based on immigration levels will overwhelm your best efforts. This assumes of course that you are able to provide insentive or disinsentives that modify the publics bahavior in a country that has long been proud of the "cowboy" "individualist" mentality. Good Luck.
Here's a good exercise that might get you thinking. Imagine the maximum number of people you could handle living in the same dwelling you do. Now, think about your neighborhood. How many people live there and how many more do you think you could stand living there next to you. Think about the schools, the roads, the water, the trash, getting to work, space to breath etc. Now go to any local government meeting and ask what the target population is for your city, county etc. Your elected officials will look at you like you were from Mars. Yet these are the people who are supposed to be leading. These are the people who are supposed to be planning for the future. All across the country there is no plan. Growth is happening and no one is taking resposibilty for it. No one is willing to stand up and say enough. Where limits have been put in place the end up being temporary as developers and business owners support candidates that will change the rules and let the pavement grow. The environment can not defend itself. It takes people who are strong enough of character to overcome the greed for the things that short sighted growth brings. We can not go on like we have and we cannot have the worlds poor moving here to begin living like we do. And maybe as important, we cannot tell the people of India and China that they must live in a sustainable way if we have not begun to do so ourselves.
I agree completely with you when you wrote, "And maybe as important, we cannot tell the people of India and China that they must live in a sustainable way if we have not begun to do so ourselves." While I do not see an immediate threat from population growth itself, I openly acknowledge that there are plenty of things that we can do to lessen our impact on the environment. You listed a bunch of them. Like you, I doubt that the "American Way of Life" is sustainable, and that is why it is good that people are thinking about this issue.
Have you checked out the Living a Sustainable Life group? If not, I highly recommend that you do because it is a great forum for you to bring up and discuss the concerns that you have listed here.
What are you going to do when the entire world's economy is based on the availability of massive poor and oppressed working class? The current strictly Capatilistic driven economy depends on a pool of very cheap labor in a very stable condition (oppressed and controlled)
It is also based on a lot of manufactured goods being purchased, needed or not, useful or not, harmful to the environment or not.
All the stores in the U.S. are full of Made in China items. In style yesterday, gone to the dump today.
We don't need this kind of economic model. We don't need billions of extremely poor to produce goods that are not necessary.
The U.S. needs an economy not based on the availibility of a large number of workers being paid at below living standard levels.
But, this is what the dogma is and it seems to be acceptable. As you ask Bruce, Where is the leadership? On the way to the bank with everyone's future.
I think your post is rhetorical but I will say that I agree. The immigration issue is a piece of a much larger pie. I call it the politics of growth. As more of consciously step off the mindless consumption wheel then we will have made the first step toward sustainability. The bigger picture is Fair Trade not Free Trade. An understanding that agreements like NAFTA do nothing but let the mega corporations line thier pockets on the backs of the poor and the middle class. Trade cannot be looked at in a vacuum. Agreements must be based on many factors such as workers rights, living wages, worker safety, the right to organize, evironmental protections, product safety standards etc. Then we begin to create a fair playing field for all that benefits the people. Sounds like we're on our way toward socialism but I find it more to my liking them corrupt and ruthless capitalism any day.