"You're wrong, Mr. President"
President Bush says he wants to revamp an immigration system that is "not working" and is "not compassionate" through a program that can't work and would be anything but "compassionate" to Americans forced to pick up the tab.
During his end-of-the-year news conference, the president formally revived his expanded "guest worker" proposal first laid out as a set of "principles" a year ago. But the Bush plan is quite unprincipled and, by any other name, another in a long line of amnesty programs. Bush confidante and former Montana Gov. Mark Racicot disputed that characterization to me during the fall campaign. But that's exactly what it is. And it will do what amnesty programs do best -- fail...
And, from George Putnam:
It is this reporter's opinion that the president of the United States refuses to change his approach to an open door policy. Oh, he will deny that he favors amnesty or graduating citizenship, but it's all there. It's what he says repeatedly over and over again, as he did in his December 20 news conference proposing allowing workers in other countries to enter or remain in the U.S. legally to FILL JOBS AMERICANS WILL NOT DO.
When asked a question about his plan to reform U.S. immigration policy, the president responded half a dozen times: FILL JOBS AMERICANS WILL NOT DO.
As a youngster of what Tom Brokaw describes as "the greatest generation" - Depression, WWII, growing up in America - I never, working in the farmlands of the Midwest, ran across a job or participated in a job Americans would not do. We planted, harvested, threshed, milked 10 cows by hand, slopped the hogs, made certain that all the farm animals were cared for, and worked sunup to sundown to put food on the table ... and ended up paid as little as a dollar for a day's work. Not only were these jobs Americans would do, WE did them! We learned the work ethic as part of our day-to-day education.
At White House news conferences, they do not allow follow-up questions. May I now join Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) in asking the president the following:
[...FAIR's questions for Bush...]
Comments
John S Bolton (not verified)
Sun, 12/26/2004 - 20:46
Permalink
Jobs that Americans will not do, should not be done here. Jobs that free men will not do should not be done here. Jobs that only foreign criminals will do should not be done here. If a foreign criminal has a job here, that does not imply that the next foreign criminal into the country is actually needed. The economy has all sorts of different mixes of labor and productivity enhancing machinery and business methods, none of which is absolutely necessary in its particular usage rate of menials. Israel's fencing out of the Palestinian workers is proof of it. We are also being given a false dilemma, where one is supposed to imagine all the foreign criminals being removed in a few months, or letting a lot more in, as if there weren't a hundred other alternatives between those two.