Wedge Issue

17 May 2006



Bush’s Reasonable Immigration Speech Falls on Many Deaf Ears

President Bush spoke to the nation, and the world, on Monday night and delivered an uninspiring but rational speech on immigration. If he could focus on solving this sort of issue rather than traipsing off in search of empire, he might have the makings of an adequate leader. He proposed getting control of the border, providing a path to citizenship for illegal aliens with deep roots in the US, and a guest worker program. Unfortunately, the issue is too emotionally charged for the parties concerned to listen to reason. Putting a government together in Baghdad may prove easier.

As always, the devil is in the details, and there were bits of the speech that clearly were meant as a basis for discussion only. Adding 6,000 national guard troops to the southern border is such a trial balloon. The border with Mexico runs 1,951 miles; 6,000 guards on three, 8-hour shifts a day means a guardsman every mile – drop in the bucket time. But Mr. Bush suggested they would coordinate intelligence and handle support for the Border Patrol. This leads into discussions of technology, how to patrol the border and the best places to deploy resources. In a word, this is a sensible place to start. Naturally, because it was sensible, the speech persuaded no one in either the pro- or anti-camp.

The nativists are opposed to letting illegal aliens stay – period. To them it is a matter of law and order; one doesn’t start off a path to citizenship by breaking the law on immigration they believe. That is a valid point, but the question is whether this violation of the law is on a par with bank robbery or rather with double parking. The president suggested fines and back taxes are in order, and then, the illegal aliens would get in line behind the legal immigrants for citizenship. This isn’t enough for people like Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who believes any path to citizenship is amnesty; he refuses to accept what he calls “a reward for law-breaking.”

On the other side of the argument are those who believe that immigration, legal or illegal, is not the problem; they think racism is the motivation behind the demands to crackdown on what they prefer to call “undocumented workers.” Sergio Bendixen, a leading expert on polling in the Hispanic community, said, “It’s become an emotional issue. It’s no longer an immigration issue, it’s whether the United States welcomes Hispanics, whether they appreciate the contribution of Hispanics.” For them, amnesty is a requirement of any final policy.

Mr. Bush, thus, is in the unfamiliar position of having to persuade people of diverse perspectives. His style up to now has been to steam-roll over the opposition. On this issue, though, his business base needs cheap labor while his nativist base needs law and order, and some also just want fewer brown non-English speakers in the country (funny, though, how few reports focus on the Irish illegals who overstayed their visas in the 1980s and 1990s in New York and Boston). His presidency will still succeed or fail based on events in Baghdad, but the events along the Rio Grande will come in second in importance. Unlike the Mess in Mesopotamia, though, on this issue, he has the backing of this journal, for whatever that may be worth.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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