Republicans Squaring Off Over Bush Plan on Immigration

NY Times ^ | January 27, 2005 | DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

[neverdem]

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 - The battle within the Republican Party over immigration policy was joined Wednesday as President Bush vigorously promoted his proposal for a guest worker program and conservatives in Congress introduced an alternative proposal to tighten immigration restrictions.

At a news conference, President Bush said again that he considered his guest worker proposal "a priority" even though Senate Republicans left it off their list of top goals. "A program that enables people to come into our country in a legal way to work for a period of time, for jobs that Americans won't do, will help make it easier for us to secure our borders," Mr. Bush said, adding: "I know there is a compassionate, humane way to deal with this issue. I want to remind people that family values do not end at the Rio Grande border."

Party conservatives, however, have strenuously opposed a guest worker plan since Mr. Bush introduced the idea in 2001, even staging a losing revolt over its inclusion in the party platform at the 2004 Republican convention. Many conservatives call the president's ideas "amnesty" - a term Mr. Bush disputes - because his plan includes ways for currently illegal immigrants to obtain temporary worker permits.

On Wednesday afternoon, Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, again introduced a measure to block illegal immigrants from obtaining driver's licenses.

At a news conference, he said the committee would not consider other immigration proposals, implicitly including the president's, until his own measure passed. A similar measure was removed from a bill to enact the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission last year. Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, is expected to introduce a driver's license restriction this year.

Mr. Sensenbrenner said his bill was primarily directed at border security, distinguishing it from other changes in immigration policy. "Immigrants are not terrorists, except a few of them," he said. "The legislation that was introduced today is designed to get the bad apples out of the barrel before the barrel was spoiled."

He said a group of House Republicans had written a letter to Mr. Bush urging him to provide full financing for provisions in last year's antiterrorism bill doubling the number of border patrol agents and tripling the number of beds for detaining illegal immigrants over the next five years. The Department of Homeland Security said recently that it was planning a smaller increase in financing, drawing the ire of advocates of tighter immigration laws.

Asked about the president's proposal, Mr. Sensenbrenner said his committee was "going to be plenty busy with other priorities, a lot of which are the priorities of the White House."

In an interview, Representative Chris Cannon, a Utah Republican who supports the president's plan, said a guest worker program would not amount to an amnesty because it would include a monetary penalty for currently illegal immigrants. "The people who want to kick them all out are not reasonable people," he said.

But Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado and chairman of the Congressional immigration caucus, vowed to defeat any program that in his view would reward lawbreakers, even questioning the president's motives. "Could it be just the corporate interests, the money interests that rely so heavily on cheap labor?" he asked

[Once-Ler]

I'll feel free to ignore your content-less 'squeeze' from now on.

How were you obligated to respond before, and was it Dubya's fault?