Bush has tried to present his lemons as lemonade. It looks good on its face, but it still doesn't reflect his whole argument for invading Iraq.
I never remember troops being deployed there for the purpose of imposing democracy. Are Bushies suggesting this is just the beginning of Bush's great campaign?
Where will all the soldiers come from? Maybe he can recruit the aliens.
WASHINGTON - President Bush called for a major overhaul of America’s immigration system Wednesday to grant legal status to millions of undocumented workers in the United States, saying the current program was not working.
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“Out of common sense and fairness, our laws should allow willing workers to enter our country and fill jobs that Americans are not filling,” the president said in an address in the East Room to members of Congress, his Cabinet and immigrant advocacy groups.
Critics of the plan said it amounted to an amnesty for illegal immigrants.
Bush’s election-year proposal is designed to help meet the needs of U.S. employers and to woo Latino voters.
“As a nation that values immigrants and depends on immigrants, we should have immigration laws that work and make us proud,” the president said. “Yet today we do not. Instead we see many employers turning to the illegal labor market. We see millions of hard-working men and women condemned to fear and insecurity in a massive undocumented economy."
“Illegal entry across our borders makes more difficult the urgent task of securing the homeland,” he said.
Bush said his proposals, if enacted by Congress, would provide a more compassionate system for immigrants who now live in the shadows of U.S. society.
“Decent, hard-working people will now be protected by labor laws with the right to change jobs, earn fair wages and enjoy the same working conditions that the law requires for American workers,” the president said.
The plan would, he said:
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Make America safer by giving the government a better idea of who was crossing U.S. borders.
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Bolster the economy by meeting employers’ needs for willing low-wage workers.
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Fulfill a mandate for compassion by guaranteeing the rights and legitimacy of illegal workers. Employers would have to pay them the minimum wage and their Social Security taxes.
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Provide incentives to entice those workers to go back to their homelands — a nod to conservatives who oppose any reward to those who enter the United States illegally. The incentives include allowing them to collect retirement benefits in their home countries based on Social Security taxes paid in the United States.
Related story
Wary reaction to plan along border
Details to come
Many of the specifics of the president’s proposal remain to be worked out by Congress in negotiations with the White House.
For instance, Bush wants to increase the nation’s yearly allotment of green cards, which allow for permanent U.S. residency, but did not say by how much. About 1 million green cards a year are issued now, although just 140,000 of them are employment-based.
Bush also wants the workers’ first three-year term in the program to be renewable, but he has not said for how long. Nor has he set the amount workers should pay to apply for the program or specify how to enforce the requirement that no U.S. worker want the job the foreign worker is taking.
Perhaps the biggest unresolved question is how the plan would allow illegal immigrants access, which they do not now have, to the process of applying for green cards, or permanent U.S. residency.
Sensitive to the opposition of many conservatives in his own party to any reward for those who broke the law when they entered the United States, Bush stated flatly, “I oppose amnesty.” But he also said workers accepted into the temporary program could immediately, with an employer’s sponsorship, begin applying for a green card.
Although these workers would get no advantage over other applicants, an illegal immigrant who tried to apply now would simply be deported.
If permanent residency were not granted before the worker’s term was up — a likely outcome given the long backlog of applicants and the relatively small percentage of applicants who receive green cards every year — the person would have to return home to apply from there.
FACT FILE A snapshot of Mexican migration to the U.S.
• The Numbers
• Timeline of Mexican-U.S. migration
• Apprehensions
• Deaths
The Numbers
There are an estimated 9 million Mexicans living in the United States and about 4 million are believed to be in the country illegally. Before Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration was weighing an immigration overhaul that would have granted legal status to many “illegals.” The drive was halted after the terrorist attacks.
Mexican legal migration to the U.S.
1901-1910 49,642
1911-1920 219,004
1921-1930 459,287
1931-1940 22,319
1941-1950 60,589
1951-1960 299,811
1961-1970 459,987
1971-1980 640,294
1981-1990 1,655,843
1991-1998 1,931,237
Timeline of Mexican-U.S. migration
1917: U.S. Immigration Act mandates a literacy test for immigrants.
1918: Under pressure from farming groups, the INS commissioner waives the immigration act requirements for Mexican laborers.
1924: U.S. Border Patrol established.
1929: Amid Great Depression, U.S. deports thousands of Mexicans by enforcing laws that were previously waived. By 1932, 345,000 Mexicans were sent back to their homeland.
1942: The Bracero Treaty between the United States and Mexico establishes a guest worker program, partly to counter a labor shortage during World War II. An estimated 5 million Mexicans entered the country under the program.
1954: Amid growing anti-immigrant sentiment, the border patrol launches a massive roundup of Mexicans in the southwestern states, known as "Operation Wetback." Up to one million undocumented Mexicans are sent back over the border in 1954, the peak year for the program.
1963: Congress allows Bracero program to expire under pressure from civil rights groups and unions concerned about the working conditions of migrant workers.
1965: The Immigration and Naturalization Act changes the criteria for immigration from national quotas to a system based on family reunification and job skills requirements.
1986: The Immigration Reform and Control Act offers an amnesty program for aliens in the country before 1982, imposes fines on employers who knowingly hire undocumented aliens and establishes a temporary resident category for agricultural workers.
1994: The North American Free Trade Agreement goes into effect. As tariffs are lifted on imports to Mexico, prices on produce drop sharply for Mexican farmers, sparking widespread migration from the land.
1994: U.S. Border Patrol launches Operation Gatekeeper, aimed at stopping illegal immigration along the traditional border crossing routes near San Diego. Over the next six years, the security clampdown is extended eastward, forcing migrants to cross inhospitable terrain.
1996: The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act is passed. Aimed in particular at the flood of illegal immigration from Mexico that followed NAFTA, the bill allocates more money for border security and increased penalties for illegal entry.
2000-2001: President Bush signals a willingness to work with Mexico on new immigration laws that would make it easier for Mexicans to work in the United States. The drive is halted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
2004: President Bush proposes a major overhaul of the immigration system to grant legal status to millions of undocumented workers in the United States.
Apprehensions
The Border Patrol, a unit of the Department for Homeland Security, is charged with is charged with protecting the nation's 8,000 miles of border, and the vast majority of its agents are stationed on the country’s southwest frontier with Mexico. Since 1994, the number of agents has more than doubled to around 9,500 along the frontier – and the number of apprehensions jumped sharply to a high of 1.6 million in fiscal year 2001. U.S. officials attribute a subsequent drop in apprehensions to improved enforcement although advocacy groups say migrants are still streaming across the border, noting the increase in remittances. Mexicans sent home more than $12 billion in 2003, up from $10 billion a year earlier.
U.S. apprehensions on the border*:
1994 979,101
1995 1,271,390
1996 1,507,020
1997 1,368,707
1998 1,516,680
1999 1,537,000
2000 1,643,679
2001 1,235,685
*Fiscal year. The figures include other nationalities, but vast majority are Mexicans.
Deaths
There has been a dramatic rise in the number of border-crossing deaths, and human rights groups have blamed the U.S. Border Patrol’s stepped-up enforcement. In 1994, the patrol launched Operation Gatekeeper on the border near San Diego, where the majority of illegal entries occur. The strategy -- which has been expanded eastward -- involves increased manpower, the installation of fencing, high-density lighting and underground sensors. As a result, migrants have been forced to traverse more inhospitable terrain to get into the United States. Drowning and heat stroke are the major causes of death along the frontier between San Diego and Yuma, Ariz., according to the California Rural Assistance Foundation.
Deaths of Mexicans on the border:
1997 129
1998 297
1999 358
2000 311
2001 491
2002 371
2003 371 (to November)
Mexico did not compile statistics before 1997.
Source: Government of Mexico; United States Border Patrol • Print this
Reaction from interest groups
As a result, even though program participants would be allowed to have dependents with them and be able to move freely between their country and the United States, activists on both sides of the immigrant issue said the president’s proposal was lacking.
“The president's proposal rewards people who have broken the law,” said Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus. “That's bad policy.”
“It is dangerous to offer additional incentives and rewards for illegal immigration while giving only lip service to border security,” Tancredo added.
Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., a member of the International Relations Committee, predicted that Bush would have trouble winning approval in Congress.
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Jan. 7: The president hopes the policy will broaden his support among Latinos, who will represent 1 of every 10 voters in the fall. NBC’s David Gregory reports.
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“This clearly is an amnesty. It provides not only amnesty but a reward for people who committed a felony by coming here illegally,” Gallegly told Reuters.
“There will be substantial opposition from Republicans, Democrats and millions of ordinary Americans once they realize what’s involved,” he said.
Pro-immigrant advocates, on the other hand, said the proposal fell short of comprehensive reform.
“Extremely disappointing,” said Cecilia Munoz, vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic immigrant advocacy group.
“It’s a serious backtracking to where the president was two years ago when the administration was prepared to provide some kind of path to legal status,” she said. “They’re proposing to invite people to be guest workers without providing any meaningful opportunity to remain in the United States to become legal permanent residents. It appears to be all about rewarding employers who have been hiring undocumented immigrants while offering almost nothing to the workers themselves.”
Even some who might benefit from the proposal questioned Bush‘s announcement.
“I have to relate it to something about the campaign,” said Mahonrry Hidalgo, a day laborer in Freehold, N.J. “It’s going to help, but it’s not the solution we want.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for its part, supports providing more stability for illegal immigrants.
“We have 10.5 million illegal workers in the United States right now," Chamber President Thomas Donohue said. "If they went home, we’d have to shut down the country.”
And Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, welcomed the proposal, saying, “I commend President Bush for this constructive step toward important and, frankly, overdue immigration reform.”
Political, diplomatic benefits
Left unsaid during the president’s speech were the political dividends White House advisers hoped the proposal would pay.
By dangling the prospect of legal status to 8 million illegal immigrants now estimated to be in this country, about half of them Mexican, Bush was granting a top priority of the business community while making his most aggressive move yet to court Latino voters. He won just more than a third of that constituency in 2000 but wants to expand his support in the community to better his chances for re-election in November.
Polls have shown support for allowing illegal immigrants to obtain legal status. In a 2002 survey by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation, 69 percent of all respondents and 90 percent of Latinos said they would favor such a program, while 28 percent of all respondents and 8 percent of Latinos opposed it.
Announcement of the plan also came just before Bush was scheduled to meet with Mexican President Vicente Fox on Monday at the Summit of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico. Bush briefed Fox on Wednesday shortly before announcing his proposal.
Relations between the two leaders grew frosty as immigration reforms sought by Fox stalled after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, but Fox welcomed Bush’s plan Wednesday, saying it would recognize the contribution Mexican workers made to the United States.
The temporary worker program would mean Mexican workers “can have all the rights that any other worker in that country has even though they do not have American citizenship or documents at the moment,” Fox said at a school ceremony in Mexico City to mark the start of a new education term.
NBC’s David Gregory and Tracie Potts, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. |
