Bush Spoke on Immigration

Bush spoke on Monday night about immigration reform. I really don't know enough about the issue to have much of an opinion. I will say what Bush said sounded pretty reasonable.

Bush wants to increase the border patrol from 12,000 to 18,000 in the next 2.5 years. But while that's happening he's going to deploy 6,000 National Guard troops to help protect the border. "The Guard will assist the Border Patrol by operating surveillance systems, analyzing intelligence, installing fences and vehicle barriers, building patrol roads, and providing training." In a following press conference it seems much of this will be via their normal 2 weeks a year training period.

Last Dec Bill O'Reilly interviewed DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and suggested using the National Guard to defend the border. His response was "Well, the National Guard is really, first of all, not trained for that mission" and "I think it would be a horribly over-expensive and very difficult way to manage this problem". So maybe that's not such a good idea. Since they won't be doing law enforcement I imagine it's not violating Posse Comitatus. It does seem an expensive way of getting fences built. Though this seems to be difficult, see one of my first rants in this blog.

He talked about a temporary worker program which seemed ok. "To hold employers to account for the workers they hire" he proposed a tamper-proof biometric id card for foreign workers. I'm not sure how this will work and I'm sure it will be expensive and forged at some point. I certainly don't see restaurant owners checking biometrics of bus boys.

The big debate seems to be about amnesty. Numbers USA seems to be an anti-immigration group, but they do have a decent page on amnesty laws if you'd like to know the history. The first Immigration amnesty was in 1986 by Reagan (so it conservatives should like this right?) and there have been a few more since then.

Bush said: "I believe that illegal immigrants who have roots in our country and want to stay should have to pay a meaningful penalty for breaking the law, to pay their taxes, to learn English, and to work in a job for a number of years. People who meet these conditions should be able to apply for citizenship, but approval would not be automatic, and they will have to wait in line behind those who played by the rules and followed the law." That does sound reasonable to me, but then again, this seems like a lot of documentation for undocumented workers.

Of course Jon Stewart pointed out that Bush's popularity graph was shaped like the US-Mexico border and his speech tried to appeal to everyone: the right, the left, the sci-fi nerds, and the fishermen.