Posted on 12/20/2004 8:52:26 PM PST by bayourod
WASHINGTON -- President Bush today renewed his call for a guest worker program for immigrants seeking employment in the United States, saying the Border Patrol shouldn't be chasing "goodhearted people who are coming here to work."
Bush has wanted such a program since taking office four years ago. But the idea was sidetracked by the Sept. 11 attacks and then left on the sideline because the White House did not want to tackle such a controversial issue during an election year.
Bush faces a tough fight in Congress. He will have to persuade Republicans that his program does not amount to amnesty for the estimated 8 million to 12 million illegal immigrants, and negotiate with Democrats who want any plan to provide workers a path to legal status.
"I fully understand the politics of immigration reform," Bush said at a news conference. "I mean, I was governor of Texas. Right there on the front lines of border politics."
Bush said creating a program where foreigners who want to work can legally enter the country will take some of the pressure off Border Patrol agents whose jobs have taken on greater importance since the terrorist attacks.
"We want our Border Patrol agents chasing crooks and thieves and drug runners and terrorists, not goodhearted people who are coming here to work," he said.
He also said the program will recognize a reality that foreigners are "doing jobs Americans won't do; take the pressure off of employers so they're not having to rely upon false IDs; cut out the coyotes who are the smugglers of these people."
Bush stressed that he does not favor automatic citizenship for immigrant workers.
"If somebody who is here working wants to be a citizen, they can get in line," he said.
Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-immigrant National Immigration Forum, said he was encouraged by Bush's comments.
"The bottom line is you have a conservative Republican president with political capital standing up and saying, `I want to fix the system,'" Sherry said. "That is unprecedented and that could set the stage for historic reform."
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said Bush's view of the issue is provincial.
"It's kind of embarrassing sometimes when the president keeps claiming he has special insight into immigration because he was governor of Texas and he doesn't. The mantra that immigrants do jobs Americans won't do is widely believed, but is economic gibberish," said Krikorian, whose group advocates for less immigration and tougher enforcement.
Let's hope for the sake of America, it is not just more Washington double-talk...
"After first denying it, Mr. Krikorian was forced to admit that CIS is a spin-off of FAIR.
In fact, CIS, FAIR, NumbersUSA, Project-USA and more than a half-dozen similar groups that Republicans have become disturbingly comfy with, were founded or funded (or both) by John Tanton, a retired doctor in Michigan. In addition to trying to stop immigration to the U.S., appropriate population-control measures for Dr. Tanton and his network include promoting China's one-child policy, sterilizing Third World women and wider use of RU-486.
FAIR, where Mr. Krikorian once worked, is run by Dan Stein and shares advisers and personnel with CIS and other members of the Tanton nexus. As our Jason Riley noted in a March op-ed, "By Dr. Tanton's own reckoning, FAIR has received more than $1.5 million from the Pioneer Fund, a white-supremacist outfit devoted to racial purity through eugenics."
Excuse me, Sir, but they aren't. They are chasing illegal immigrants, who skipped over a porous border for work, to sell drugs, to steal, rape, and murder, and to get on various governmental rolls to get money for nothing. And IMO you just undercut them.
Playing word games doesn't change the facts. People who want to come here to work should be allowed to. Labor is an asset, not a liability.
But if your only problem with Mexican laborers is that they are coming here illegally, then you should welcome Bush's plan to allow them to come here legally, right?
Or can you now come up with another feeble excuse to dislike them?
We'll just agree to disagree. Have a Merry Christmas.
No. You're just playing more word games. No one is being granted amnesty from any crimes they have committed.
I could be swayed to support a program for "guest workers" so long as there are extremely strict (and enforced) criteria for the program. This would include:
1. Very, VERY strict criteria on the types of work they may do.
2. Absolutely NO family members may join them during their employment period in the USA ( and by this I mean NONE! NO wives, no children no parents. NONE!! as in ZERO!).
3.They MUST be paid via check (NO CASH!!) and have ALL taxes garnished from their wages at a higher rate than US citizens pay.
4. They MUST visit an Immigration/"Guest worker" Social worker every 2 weeks (sort of like a probation officer - if they don't show up 2 times, a warrant is issued for their arrest, once apprehended they are deported and lose eligibility for citizenship forever).
5.They MUST enter the country with a valid guest worker visa (valid in increments of 3 months, six months, 9 months or one year - no more) and ALL arrangements for employment must be made PRIOR to their arrival through a "Guest worker employment agency".
6.These workers will not be entitled to ANY government benefits or subsidies. Employers may choose to provide benefits such as basic healthcare or housing but are not required to do so. If this benefit IS provided, only the actual worker may be covered and only during his period of employment. Any costs that are not covered by the employer provided benefits would be garnished from the wages of the guest worker.
I think that's about it...for now. I may come up with a few more ideas for what could be deemed an acceptable "guest worker" program to me.
As an old girlfriend once told me, everything's negotiable.
hmmmmm, would that "line" be anything like the "line" they are suppose to get in to come into the country in the first place???
How do they expect to get a good white collar executive job with a company, if that company doesn't exist because they don't have enough blue collar laborer employees?
:::garble:::zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Or relocate overseas? Or outsource to overseas companies? What good does that do the American economy or their legal employees who would lose their jobs.
President Bush's guest worker program may keep U.S. companies from leaving, outsourcing or folding. It may allow new companies to start up, former U.S. companies to relocate back to the U.S. and companies to do work in-house that they are now outsourcing overseas.
Everyone of goodwill wins.
please 'un-fix' the 'latest articles summary'
Clicking on This: "President renews call for guest worker program
Posted by bayourod
On Bloggers & Personal 12/20/2004 10:52:26 PM CST · 16 replies · 40+ views
The Houston Chronicle/AP ^ | Dec. 20, 2004 "
---
took me to post #1, instead of post #16.
ping
Most regulated legit companies manage just fine, but occasionally get bit by fake docs. the new system should fix that.
But legal regulated(fed Id #) companies are not the illegal employer of choice. It is the vast unregulated companies that employ them and the gubermint cannot touch them! They are all too common and cash only. No paper trails or shyster accountants and lawyers.
They employ millions in a variety of fields, and they are the problem.
Fifty million Chinese would come here tomorrow under your terms. Do you want to let them come in, no questions asked, no visas, no papers, no permission, the way you want folks who can walk across the border to freely come in?
How about the rest of the world? A billion would leave for the USA tomorrow. Should we take them all in, no visas required, no health check no nothing? Or only Mexicans?
"Jobs Americans won't do" means jobs Americans used to do for 10-20 bucks an hour. Carpenter, welder, plumber, mason etc. Jobs that fed a family, and put a roof over their heads.
Now that "Job Americans won't do" goes to illegal aliens who work for $5 an hour, cash, and no benefits. For illegals willing to live 10 to a room in squalor.
This is what the RINOOBLs actually want to protect: their dirt-cheap illegal labor supply.
RINOOBLs would chain their grannies to machines to cut labor costs, and increase quarterly profits.
They don't care about the destruction of the American middle class. They couldn't care less. RINOOBLs live in gated communities, their kids go to private academies.
They don't mind if America turns into another Brazil. In fact, they welcome it. It will mean ever lower labor costs.
The bottom line here is Bush is going to legalize millions of these illegal aliens, the same people that have no respect for our laws or our borders.
And we all know damn well, this will only bring in millions more.
Yes indeed. The RINOOBL policy makers have much more in common with the elites who currently run Russia, Brazil etc. They all meet at Davos, and decide how to carve up the world over champagne and caviar. They could care less about the slums surrounding their glittering office towers. Calcutta, Sao Paulo, Houston: it's really all the same to them.
Yep, but at least now the RINOOBLs are worried enough about the Joe Sixpack reaction that they have to lie, and try to feed us horse$#!+ euphamisms like "guest worker program" instead of calling it another amnesty (which of course it is.)
The country-club RINOs know that Joe Sixpack starts loading magazines and looking for rope when he hears about an amnesty for the 12-15 million ILLEGALs swamping America.
Joe Sixpack is acutely aware that his old $15 an hour construction job is now being done for $5 an hour, by an illegal alien who lives 10 men to a room.
Joe's getting mighty tired of being lied to, from the right and the left.
Sabertooth, keep on emailing Hugh Hewitt!
No. You're just playing more word games. No one is being granted amnesty from any crimes they have committed.
Rod, You are the expert "word Game" player. The illegals are not limited to Mexicans as you propose. These people broke the law by crossing our borders. They break the law by using fake ID's. They break it by using phoney SS card #'s. They break it by driving without a license, insurance etc. When will you ever get off you "everybody on FR hates Mexicans" kick? You can't and won't carry on a conversation on this subject without inserting and accusing every poster that remotely disagrees with you of hating Mexicans. This is DU kind of crap and, I, as well as many other FReepers want to have intelligent dialogue about this subject.
Bush doesn't know how many of these good hearted people have tried to kill me and my fellow law enforcement officers. If he did I'm sure he would renig on his amnesty.
Illegal aliens do not follow immigration laws now. They are not going to follow another immigration law just because it's called a "guest worker program".
Yeah, it's probably a good idea that you keep avoiding me since you can't explain how GW's amnesty plan is going to be enforced.
Love your new tagline.
For the umteenth time, Border Patrol agents have repeately said that the suggestion of Bush's "legal" guest worker program has increased the flow of illegals over the border even since 1/2004 when he started his self-serving promotion again. It's documented by the guys on the front...deal with it.
What, exactly, part of the above sentence do you not UNDERSTAND?!? The guys on the border say so! Can you not ever listen to the men in the trenches; the guys who are fighting the coyotes; the guys who are risking their lives and limbs; the guys who are working against all odds; the guys who are shot at weekly; the guys who are sweating in the desert sun to protect you from OTM's?
Let me tell you something Mr. Open Borders. I lived 2 miles from the border in Chula Vista, CA during the late '70's and early and mid '80's, and had to chase them off my property while my children were scared in the night from the poor "they will do the jobs Americans won't do" hoards of thieving determined criminals passing thu our side gate. They not only stole local cars, but perpertated home invasions on a daily basis. Again, that was 2 decades ago...and it has only increased, according to local LE.
But now that the "bad" racist whites have left that neighborhood (out of fear), it is has become a barrio, a ghetto, a slum. Is that what you want for our American life? Is that what you want for our hard-earned standard of living? If so, you are are an enabler of that disinigration. I, personally, believe that those earn and produce have a "right" to protect the lifestyle they have created. If you don't, then enjoy the invasion...it's coming to you!
And while I'm addressing you, please let us know how the deterioation of entire communities is a good thing. Please, let us know what you think of the California barrios in Venture, Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino counties in Califronia is a good thing. Please explain why there is unrefuted proof that emergency rooms all over the Southwest are closing due to the financial burder of immigrants (mostly illegal). Please explain why a dispropionate amount of Californian prison inmates are illegal aliens. Please explain why California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas services are costing billions to tax payers due to the explosive growth of illegal immigration.
Explain it to us. We're waiting. If you want citations, I've have dozens and dozens. Just ask.
I'm starting to doubt it. But thank you for trying.
Can you say CRIMINAL INVADERS?
.
./sarcasm
Thanks and well said.
Unfortunately our stammerer-in-chief has his simple mind fixated on a Mexico-merger. The needless, avoidable, deaths and rapes of American citizens doesn't seem to concern him.
big deal!
HAHAHA
Sounds like a white mans "La Raza"...hahahaha
sooo, what's the problem here?
It's Amnesy baby....get with the program...it lets them "regester" , to work and overlooks the FACT that they came here ILLEGALLY.
You should stop playing word games amigo.
I'm not your "baby" nor your "amigo".
Your thirty year old slang makes you sound like a preteen "dork".
"Playing word games doesn't change the facts. People who want to come here to work should be allowed to. Labor is an asset, not a liability."
I see your garbage continues. Why don't you tell the good folks why your such a proponent of illegals rod?
I mean you're always calling for honesty but not willing to be honest.
Extremely hypocritical of you don't you think?
"No one is being granted amnesty from any crimes they have committed."
Lies, lies and more lies and so close to Christmas.
Naughty, naughty. I know someone who'll be getting coal.
I'm not a "proponent" of illegals. I support President Bush's guest worker plan.
And my motivation? I want to continue being the beneficiary of the greatest period of economic prosperity in the history of the world, just like all Americans.
Those are facts. If you continue to say otherwise I'll continue to challenge you to prove it.
You support anyone that aids and abets illegal aliens. You could care less who the politician is as long as they agree with you.
Liar, liar. You're hypocrisy knows no bounds rod.
How pathetic that you can't even come clean about your true motivations.
Truth has never been a high priority for the Wall St. Journal and CATO Institute types.
Especially those who personally benefit from having the illegal scum here.
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