Jul 06 2006

Many See Phantom Shift By Bush

Published by at 12:19 pm under All General Discussions,Illegal Immigration

I am seeing a lot of sightings of a supposed Bush shift on the immigration issue which seems to mirages (in my humble opinon). The first sighting of this phantom shift came from a link on Drudge:

President George W. Bush is adopting a tougher line in the contentious debate on overhauling US immigration laws, putting an emphasis on border control and strict enforcement measures favored by his conservative base.

The new approach was evident as the US leader made an appearance Wednesday at a coffee shop in Alexandria, Virginia, touting enforcement measures meant to catch illegal immigrants when they try to apply for work.

“Part of a comprehensive immigration plan is to give employers the tools necessary to determine whether or not the workers they’re looking for are here legally in America,” the US president said, flanked by immigrant workers from Iran, Guatemala and El Salvador.

“Part of a comprehensive immigration plan is to … say to employers, ‘It’s against the law for you to hire somebody here illegally. We intend to find you when we catch you doing it,'” the president said.

Bush plugged his administration’s “Basic Pilot” initiative, a voluntary, online verification system allowing employers to check an applicant’s immigration status against federal databases. The president called for making the program mandatory.

But he also stressed the importance of making it easier for employers to legally hire foreign-born workers “for jobs Americans aren’t doing.”

Where’s the shift? The idea was to (a) provide employers a tool to ID authorized workers who are part of the guest worker program (and therefore those who have passed a background check and have committed to pay back taxes through a payment plan and have basically agreed to “stay in the light” and separate themselves from the underground population (which is where our risks lie) and (b) crack down on employers who do not tow the line. The guest worker program is central to any crackdown on employers because (duh!) we have to get the legal workers registered and make sure we can keep track of them while they are here.

Well, I just chalked this one report up to a shifting in perspective as reality sinks in. People are always claiming how much others are moving their direction, just before they compromise. But then I went over to JOM and saw a post on how Kaus was right all along about how the House position was so strong it would move Bush!

Mickey Kaus has said for months that the political viability of the House “enforcement only” immigration plan is being misunderestimated. Today the Times front-pages this:

Bush Signaling Shift in Stance on Immigration

It seems the order in which Bush talks about the aspects of his long published plans is key in understanding this phantom shift. I have the upmost respect for Tom Maguire, so I am not trying to belittle his views, but there is no shift here. There may finally be some comprehension. The guest worker program was the pivot point to a lot of problems. It allowed for background checks to weed out hardened criminals (and then boot them out). Without background checks you can’t weed out the criminals. It was a carrot to entice the good people to come forward so we did not waste precious and strained law enforcement resources scouring the country for these people. It was the program that would issue tamper proof IDs and establish a database of legal immigrants. It was the program that could require immigrants retain up to date information on there whereabouts in terms of work. It solved a lot of problems and offered a path to citizenship in 10-15 years if these people kept their noses clean, paid all back taxes and stayed employed. The hard liners are just now understanding how all this must come together to be effective and efficient. And those are too very important words. Effective and efficient. The House path to make illegal immigration a felony and focus only on building walls was incomplete and shoddy. And any incomplete solution is a wasteful one.

It will be interesting to see this new phantom shift play itself out, and to see how different the end result is compared to the two starting points. The hard right has lost the deportation demands (and of course it never, ever happened). They lost on the idea of starving the immigrants out by throwing them out of work (and onto our streets – which is the last place we want 12 million jobless people). And now they see a shift in Bush because there are elements dealing with incentives and punishments on employers (where there were never many incentives on the House side). Why am I not surprised.

27 responses so far

27 Responses to “Many See Phantom Shift By Bush”

  1. retire05 says:

    Terrye, why do you insist that someone go to another blog? Do you need back up?
    You said:
    “And what questions have I not answered?”

    Simple. My question. Here it is again since you seem to have short term memory loss:

    if a vagrant (whom you don’t know) moves into your home uninvited, are you willing to “compromise” with that vagrant in order to let him continue living in your home?

    I realize you consider it a loaded question so you refuse to answer it.

    Do you know the difference between a child molester and a migrant worker? Maybe this will help:
    http://www.drdsk.com/articles/html#Illegals

    Perhaps you would like to explain to all of us the meaning of “guest” since that term has been so loosely thrown around by the well meaning bleating hearts of our nation. But where I come from a “guest” is a person who is invited to your home, your cabin, your nation. It is a person who comes for a while and then leaves. It is not a person who comes and you give him a blueprint to permanent residency at your home.
    What you want to do is add to our nation 11-20 million people who are (90%) undereducated. Add to that handicap the language barrier and the attitude that they do not have to learn english. So while you (meaning your side) yak about how they will add to our economy, nothing could be farther from the truth. They will take more from the economy than they contribute because they, as legal residents, will then become eligible for all social services (all forms of welfare) as well as up to almost $4,000.00 a year in a check to be sent to them by the IRS for their Earned Income Tax credit over and above having returned to them what they paid in.
    You say you can’t deport 11 million people. Why not? Deport 1 million and you will see a flow of people heading south like Canadian geese during migration in self-deportation. Deport 10 a day, 100 a day. It worked during Eisenhower’s time and it will work now.
    I saw an interview with a prisoner in Sheriff Joe’s jail. He had come into the U.S. illegally and was given six months when he was caught. When the reporter asked him if he would try again, once he was released, he said “no”. He said he would stay in Mexico because he came to the U.S. to work and now he can’t send his family any money because he is in jail and so he would just work in Mexico.
    Do you really want millions of people who do not have enough loyality to their own nation to try to make it better living in our nation?
    There is no oppression in Mexico. There are no mass graves or a dictator in Mexico chopping off heads and giving the women over to rape rooms. And there are jobs in Mexico, they just don’t pay what we do and the Mexicans are having to compete with the imported Central Americans like our citizens are having to compete with them.
    But unlike Americans who are speaking out against the invasion from our neighbor to the south, they leave. That is not the American way. When the coal miners, the mill workers and the longshoremen were not getting fair wages, they did not leave and invade another nation illegally to get better wages. They stayed in the U.S. and fought for their fair wage rights. But not so the illegals. They want to take the easy way out and since it is being taught in the Mexican schools that the American southwest was really stolen from them and still belongs to them, they don’t feel they need to come here legally.

    Don’t get me wrong, I blame the corrupt government of Mexico and Vicente Fox who promised to make things better in Mexico. That was six years ago, and he has not done a damn thing. But I also blame the Mexican population themselves for not having the cajones to stand up to their govenment. The only ones who are fighting the corruption in Mexico are the teachers. Do you wonder why we never read about the teacher’s strike in Mexico in our MSM?
    Your arguments show you have little touch with reality about what is happening in states like mine; Texas. Or the dynamics of Mexican politics and corruption. You are so secure in your position as an American you think that all people want to be Americans. That is just not true. Granting amnesty (and that is exactly what it is) to millions of people will have the same affect it had in 1986. It will create a flow of illegals who will home to gain the same thing somewhere down the road when there is another amnesty.

  2. retire05 says:

    Terrye, sorry, to inconvenience you. Here is the web site:

    http://www.drdsk.com/articles.html#Illegals

  3. For Enforcement says:

    TERRYE

    Retire05 did an excellent job of answering for me. I would like to make one further point though. Most local community colleges offer an English Comprehension 101 Course that you would benefit greatly from. If you can re-read that news item about the border in Texas and not understand that they said the traffic had just moved over to Arizona, then you have a serious Comprehension problem.

    What questions have you not answered? Just answer the one Retire05 has asked you and others on this site? That’ll do it.

    The rest of your pitiful comments aren’t worthy of spending time on.

  4. For Enforcement says:

    As a direct result, smuggling is shifting as far away as Arizona, officials said.

  5. wiley says:

    Patrick did a good job explaining why border security is the priority and can/should be done first. Saying the guest worker program has to be done first or at same time as border security is simply ignorant. That being said, if we can get agreement on implementing a guest worker program, then great — let’s do it. But, the path to citizenship is another story … that will take longer to resolve, which is why a compromised, phased approach is the only chance of real immigration reform happening any time soon.
    Also, with respect to AJ’s site, the real “hardliners” are AJ, Terrye & Crosspatch who seem to be unbending and unwilling to compromise their everything now approach — even if it means the truly horrendous Senate bill — for implementing immigration reform & control.

  6. Terrye says:

    Well this is getting stupid. It really is. I mention that putting the NG on the border seems to have slowed the flow in parts of Texas. I get attacked. I say I support a guest worker program and I get a report on the lack of political oppression in Mexico etc.

    Folks I probably agree with you on 90% of the immigration issue, but because I do not agree with you 100% I am swarmed.

    Well I did let my Congressman and Senators know that I support a tighter border and a guest worker program. I also told tham that I was concerned about the fanaticism effecting some people in the debate. You are driving me the other way.

  7. retire05 says:

    Terrye says:

    “You are driving me the other way.”

    It seems more like a short put.