"Bush Talks Tougher on Immigration, but It's Still Amnesty"

[...Bush's hot air...]

It is hard not to be skeptical of this White House when it starts saying it will enforce our immigration laws because it has utterly failed to do so to date. Its de facto immigration policy has been the Clinton administration's...

After Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security declared a holiday (though it has no legal authority to suspend laws) from employer sanctions laws – not only in the storm-tossed areas, but nationwide. This opened the doors for unscrupulous employers to hire illegal aliens – thus displacing or hedging out hurting Americans whose jobs had been destroyed.

As the administration negotiates behind the scenes as Congress drafts immigration enforcement legislation, the Bush crowd continues to oppose the most promising ideas, such as the CLEAR Act to get state and local police a constructive response from federal authorities and mandatory employment verification to shut off the "jobs magnet."

All the while, the administration has hawked a massive amnesty to legalize virtually all 10-12 million illegal aliens. This scheme has been, and continues to be, packaged as a "guestworker" program.

Regardless of how the president labels it, the plan he described in his Arizona speech is his same old amnesty plan. The illegals get legalized, they get to keep the jobs they came here to steal, and six years later no political will will exist to make them go home. Politicians will end up giving them green cards and then citizenship.

Do we need the foreigners? The fact is that there are no jobs Americans won't do or don't want. For instance, Census figures show that in the most immigrant-filled jobs, in farming, fishing and forestry occupations, 61.2 percent of workers are Americans. But Americans can't afford to take jobs for immigrant-caused wage-depressed low pay and lacking decent benefits.

We really don't need more foreign workers. We need consistent enforcement of the immigration laws on the books. We need to let market forces regulate themselves without government command-and-control manipulating the labor supply...

Immigration2005b · Thu, 12/01/2005 - 13:33 · · Importance: 4