"Immigration debate ready to heat up in Congress"

Surprisingly, Knight-Ridder tells it somewhat like it is:

With the 109th Congress set to convene Tuesday, members and lobbyists were revving up to debate two thorny immigration initiatives that strive toward seemingly contradictory ends.

The most sweeping immigration proposals of 2005 are likely to be sounded out with President Bush as he seeks bipartisan support for a plan to grant temporary work cards to hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals. Bush put the plan on the back-burner after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, then brought it forward again at his final formal news conference of 2004.

"We want our Border Patrol agents chasing, you know, crooks and thieves and drug-runners and terrorists, not good-hearted people who are coming here to work," he told reporters.

Those in favor of tighter immigration restrictions say such a program would pander to employers looking for an abundant supply of low-wage workers, while saddling the government with their health and education costs. They're also concerned the proposal might extend beyond short-term permits by providing a path to permanent residence...

Comments

If it is called good-hearted to be a foreign criminal in America, isn't it faintingly weak and soft-hearted to believe so? Why must an appeal to emotion be used; asking us to be 'good'/soft-hearted instead of rational? How will compassion for foreign criminals working their way on to net public subsidy, not cause more 9-11's? There is no procedure suggested by which the government would separate the extremely criminal from the moderately so, out of the millions of unscreened foreign criminals running loose here. Illegal alien workers, who are on net public subsidy, are not workers on net balance, but parasitical destroyers of the well-being of the net taxpayer.