Bush set to focus on immigration

CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush returns to work Monday on the volatile issue of immigration, where his hope for a legislative breakthrough is complicated by cold relations with Congress.

Bush will be back in Yuma, Ariz., to inspect the construction of border fencing and to push for the creation of a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. The trip serves as a bookend to the visit Bush made to the same southwest desert city last May.

It also comes as tension rises over a new immigration proposal tied to the White House.

Bush's team is privately working hard to rally votes for what Bush calls comprehensive reform — a mix of get-tough security with promises of fair treatment for undocumented residents.

The Democratic-led Congress, eager to show some accomplishment on a core issue, wants to get a law passed. So does Bush, who is seeing opportunities to advance his agenda shrink.

Yet immigration is a sticky issue, and the fault lines don't fall along party lines.

With up to 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., lawmakers haven't agreed on how to uphold the law without disrupting lives, eroding the workforce and risking political upheaval.

Bush is hopeful for a legislative compromise by August. He will make his case at a point along the Yuma Sector Border, a 125-mile stretch overlapping Arizona and California.

The president's relations with Congress these days have been soured by the war in Iraq. He is at odds with Democratic lawmakers over a bill to extend war funding in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Administration officials, led by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, have been meeting privately for weeks with Republican senators. That expanded to a meeting in late March with key senators from both parties.

Out of that session, a work-in-progress plan emerged — one described as a draft White House plan by officials in both parties and advocacy groups who got copies of the detailed blueprint.

The White House disputes that characterization. Spokesman Scott Stanzel said it was only a starting point, an emerging consensus of Republican senators and the White House.

Regardless, the floated proposal has already met opposition. Thousands of people marched through Los Angeles on Saturday, fueled in part by what they called a betrayal by Bush.

The plan would grant work visas to undocumented immigrants but require them to return home and pay hefty fines to become legal U.S. residents. They could apply for three-year work visas, dubbed "Z" visas, which would be renewable indefinitely but cost $3,500 each time.

The undocumented workers would have legal status with the visas, but to become legal permanent residents with a green card, they'd have to return to their home country, apply at a U.S. embassy or consulate to re-enter legally and pay a $10,000 fine.

That's far more restrictive than the bipartisan bill the Senate approved last year.

So far, Bush has only gotten part of what he wants — border legislation. He signed a bill last October authorizing 700 additional miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The president has spent much of the last four days on vacation at his Texas ranch. He returns to Washington Monday after the Arizona visit.

Here is a series of excerpts from posts which I published beginning in April of 2006. That post, a vanity, drew a lot of fire from Bushbots but when it was republished several months later the mood of the conservatives on Free Republic had evidently altered in favor of its sentiments because I received virtually no flak then. These posts begin with a prophecy in April 2006 that we are going to suffer at the polls in the November election and the other posts show the disheartening slide in that direction. The last excerpt is from a vanity entitled "why we lost" which was a postmortem of the predictable consequences of the Republicans fellings on immigration and other issues. The dates in the original post have been corrected to eliminate typos.

Posted on 04/07/2006 3:47:52 AM PDT by nathanbedford

It’s Bush's Fault

This time it really is Bush's fault and it's not funny anymore.

The Republican Party is peering into the abyss and it's Bush's fault. The party will be lucky to salvage control of one house out of the wreckage of November's election. The damage will not be contained in 2006 and a Democrat victory is virtually assured for the White House in 2008. To the degree that one can see over the political horizon, the Republicans will be out of power for at least one generation and perhaps two as the decisive Hispanic vote swings against us.

The Anglo-Saxon tradition for respect, no for veneration, of the rule of law is being perverted on the streets of America into a cynicism which has the potential to undermine the last best hope of democracy in the world. As surely as Rome fell from internal rot, America faces the utter disintegration of its institutions. Corruption, the handmaiden of cynicism, will surely seep across the land with this inflow of illegal immigrants as our politicians, led by our president, cravenly abandon our sovereignty.

And all this is George Bush's fault.

In January 2001, George Bush took an oath which required him to faithfully enforce the laws. No fair observer can conclude that he has even halfheartedly attempted faithfully to enforce our immigration laws and to see that our borders are secure. After five years of malignant neglect the situation has grown out of control and we are confronted with the specter of the illegal aliens in their hundreds of thousands brazenly insulting the flag on the streets of America. It was utterly within Bush's power during his tenure in office to have prevented all of this simply by enforcing existing laws, but he would not. Vigorous action along the southern frontier would have radically diminished the inflow of illegal aliens. Vigorous enforcement against employers who knowingly hired illegal aliens would have changed the culture to the point where the reward for crossing the border would have been greatly diminished. Instead of a vicious circle of tens of millions of immigrants flooding every uncrowded nook and cranny in the land, a virtuous circle draining away illegal immigrants would have been created. But Bush would not.

We did not need, and we do not need now, new laws to choke off this noxious inflow. We need the political will to enforce existing law and save our democracy.

Bush has not the will.

.....

But President Bush himself bears a large portion of the responsibility for bringing the party in the conservative movement to this perilous place where we might lose power for generations to come. It is now up to a few stalwart members of the House of Representatives to stand against the full power and wrath of the administration, against all of the rhinos and liberals in the United States Senate, against the whole of the Democrat party, and against the weight of the drive-by media. If they do not crack, if they do not sell out entirely the conservative base, the movement has a chance to continue. But if these few members get swept aside, then it is not an exaggeration to say that the party has every chance of losing at least one house in the next election in a very great chance indeed of losing the White House in 2008.

Once this new wave of immigration is baptized and granted the vote, conservatism will be out of vogue in this country for at least a generation and, given the political realities of Western Europe, conservatism may never be able to again emerge out of the swamps of one-worldism which the Democrats will visit upon us.

.....

While some exit polls say that only 7% of voters regarded immigration as the important issue, I am personally convinced that the percentage is much higher among conservatives and, anyway, the implications for the Republican Party and the conservative cause of unchecked illegal immigration is nothing short of catastrophic. Bush bashing or not, the cold reality is that George Bush has willfully and deliberately failed to to enforce the nation's laws on immigration. Bush has simply got a blind spot here, he wants amnesty and, by God, now he is going to get it because the Democrats are going to give it to him. The only hope for sanity in controlling immigration has died with Republican control of the House. Bush's duty was to enforce existing law against employers who seek unfair competitive advantage by hiring illegals at substandard wages. Now we have upwards of 30 million illegals in America and there is no conservative branch of government that can stop these people getting the vote eventually and, believe me, they will not vote conservative in my lifetime. Bush's stealth legacy to the Republican Party will become apparent as he exits the White House and Republicans remain in minority status for as long as the eye can see. Bush's dereliction in this regard justifies every conservative in turning his face from Bush and many did on election Day.

Yes I agree he is a good man, as was is father. The failings of this administration come not from lack of goodness but from want of aggressive partisanship and dedication to real conservative principles. I have felt this way for some years now and more than two years ago I published this:

I too have written such e-mails in my head. The problem is not really that George Bush would not read them but that he would not heed them. The problem with George Bush is that he is not primarily a conservative, he is primarily a Christian, and he does not have a calculus that is congruent with yours or mine, even though both of us might be Christians.

George Bush sees partisan politics as petty and ultimately meaningless. We see partisanship as the indispensable stuff of freedom. At election time the Bushes will hold their nose and dip into partisanship. But it is not in their essential nature to wage war for tactical political advantage.

George Bush wants what Bill Clinton wanted: To fashion a legacy. He does not want to be remembered as the man who cut a few percentage points from an appropriation bill but as the man who reshaped Social Security. I've come to the conclusion that the Bushes see politics as squirmy, fetid. It must be indulged in if one is to practice statesmanship but it is statesmanship alone that that is worthy as a calling.

They are honest, they are loyal, they are patrician. There would've been admired and respected if had lived among the founding fathers. But it is Laura Bush and Momma Bush who really and truly speak for the family and who tell us what they are thinking and who they are. There's not a Bush woman who does not believe in abortion. They believe in family, they live in loyalty, they believe in the tribe, but they do not believe in partisan politics.

I believe it is time for us to decide no longer to be used by the Bush family as useful idiots and instead to begin to use the Bushes as our useful idiots . I say this with the utmost admiration and respect for everything the Bushes stand for. Who would not be proud beyond description to have a father or an uncle who was among the first and youngest of naval aviators to fight in the Pacific and to be twice shot down. Not a stain or blemish of corruption or personal peccadillo has touched the family(except for the brother whom I believe was cleared of bank charges). They are the living embodiment of all that is good and noble in the American tradition.

But they are not conservative.

More recently, at the time of the Harriet Myers nomination I posted the following in an attempt toillustrate howGeorge Bush's Christian commitment leads to loyalty which leads to cronyism which leads to Harriet Myers and Gonzalez:

As for Republicans, any who vote for Miers will thereafter be ineligible to argue that it is important to elect Republicans because they are conscientious conservers of the judicial branch's invaluable dignity.

As a result of the policies of the Bush administration, Republicans have forfeited their formerly kryptonite hundred year claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility. Contrary to what Rush Limbaugh says, the Democrats do have an affirmative program, it is to be the party of fiscal responsibility by raising taxes and cutting spending. They will point out that the Republicans are the party of fiscal irresponsibility because they have cut taxes and increased spending. Because Bush and the Congressional Republicans have sought to buy votes with federal spending rather than cut spending in all areas apart from national defense, it is now the Democrats who can plausibly say that it is they who are fiscally responsible.

Their argument will not convince us but it will be persuasive enough, especially when supported by a full-court press from the whole of the mainstream media, to blur the fundamental distinction between the parties and perhaps gain the next election by confusing a fair portion of the electorate.

Thus we have wantonly kicked away one of the legs of our stool. Another leg of the stool was comprised of our ability to go to the electorate, as George Bush did successfully in the last two elections, and persuasively argue that we were the party of judicial integrity. That we were the party which manned the threshold to the Constitution like the Patriots at Thermopylae to check the ravening horde of liberals who would sack the Constitution like a city which had succumbed to a siege.

The Harriet Meir nomination in a stroke has needlessly compromised our ability plausibly to appeal to the electorate as of the party which stands on constitutional principle and eschews judicial opportunism.

We are now left with only one issue which separates us from the Democrats, national security. Like it or not, ever since there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, we've been on the run on this issue. Yes I know we won the last election on this issue but the tide has clearly turned. Watch Hillary contrived to present herself as a plausible candidate who is strong on defense.

Why did we saw off two of our three legs? On the issue of spending some would say it is because Bush was never a conservative. Others would say that it was the war that did it but that would not be the whole truth, at least that would not be the whole explanation. Others would say that it is simply the nature of a politician to buy votes with other people's money and the temptation, even to Republicans, is irresistible.

My own view is that our present dilemma is the product of a little bit of each of the above. For years now I've been posting my view the George Bush is not essentially a movement conservative but a committed Christian. Here's what I've been saying recently:

The truth is straightforward, as usual. Bush is first a committed Christian, then a devoted family man who values personal loyalty to an extreme, and third, a conservative when that philosophy does not conflict with the first two. In this appointment, Bush believes he has satisfied all three legs of the stool. This is what I posted yesterday:

On the limited evidence available, I do positively believe Bush appointed her because she has been reborn. I mean that quite respectfully. I mean that he is counting on her being a new person. Most of the time it means she will vote conservative. But I honestly do not think Bush appointed her to vote conservative. I think he appointed he to vote in the SPIRIT.

The sad thing for us conservatives is to contemplate just how unnecessary the debacle over Harriet Meir really was. One can understand the fear in the legislative heart of retribution from constituents as their snouts are pulled away from the trough. One can even understand Bush's, or perhaps more accurately Rove's, trepidations in dealing with immigration arising out of fear that they will be called racists and out of the desire to pander to portions of the business community. But the whole nomination fiasco is almost uniquely unrelated to identifiable political or policy considerations. In the absence of such temporal explanations, I am left with the conclusion that Bush has a selected her because she's Christian.

Here's part of a letter to my representatives. When the President gets serious about his brand of immigration reform, we are all in trouble. George Bush and his allies need to be handed their heads on this issue. They are no friends to America and its citizens when it comes to immigration

"The recent events regarding immigration and the proposals by Congress. the Senate and the President leave me confused and angry. Confused that so many would choose to go against the wishes of the majority of those that they represent, and angry that the results would jeopardize the future of my children and grandchildren.

Any bill that grants amnesty is unacceptable, no matter what it is called and that goes for employers as well. Security of the border is paramount. An end to social services and medical care, unless life-threatening, is a must.

End the anchor baby process. As I read the law regarding those born on American soil it says “Subject to the jurisdiction…” How can an illegal be under the jurisdiction if they broke the law getting here?

The idea that we would give illegals Social Security credit and allow access to the Earned Income Tax Credit borders on the criminal. Let’s take a system that is already in trouble and make it so it can never be fixed.

Some of these proposals are so flawed that I am stunned that anyone who claims to represent American citizens could present them, let alone put them to a vote, especially anyone who calls themselves a Republican. Any path to citizenship should be earned, not given. And anyone who has already broken the law crossing the border or overstaying their visa should should be disqualified.

These are the feelings of the majority of voters, especially those of the Republican party. Failure to act responsibly on this issue will result in more bad news at the polls."

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