They really believe is this, as did Reagan with his "Shining City America".
These are all long term goals, and we have all lauded them in the past for this vision.
Why is it that now it is some ulterior motive.
I'll tell you why......because someone really wants to destroy these visionary ideas by labeling them in the negative.
It is really surprising to me that so many have bought into it and are now visibly and actively participating with some very strange bedfellows to undermine what the Republican Party has stood for. A vision that has been our motto for a generation.
Sorry, but Bush is doing the undermining here - unless you think counting on near-total Dem support to pass his immigration agenda is somehow representative of what the Republican Party stands for.
President Reagan believed any immigration "solution" had to put the rule of law first-- it simply didn't work out that way. Any attempt to deal with the problem that does not is not establishing a long term path to establishing a shining city on hill; just the opposite.
I at NO time accused Mary Cheney, George P. Bush, George W. Bush or anyone else of having "ulterior motives" if by that you mean some sort of dishonesty. Mary Cheney is a very admirable individual who has put the nations's security ahead of an issue very near and dear to her heart, and in my opinion all of us, including President Bush, should follow her noble example... Because no matter you stand on the Borders issue, it is not as important as the issue of the WOT. Many take this to mean border control advocates must not throw overboard this great president, and I agree... But it also goes the other way-- he must not throw over the base because his presidency is too important in the WOT to so much as weaken it just so we can get a guest worker's program, even assuming for the purpose of discussion such a program would be a boon to the nation on its own terms.
That does not mean that need agree with her or Vice President Cheney, who I also admire very much, on every issue. Many conservatives have trouble understanding President Bush's refusal to compromise on this issue as he did on others such as the Education bill. I was simply speculating as to why he might feel so strongly about it that he (apparently)refuses to negotiate with the House members of his own party.
Just a few other thoughts.
I'm all for welcoming legal immigrants. I'm against guest worker programs in principle, although I think prima facie we should be against them, because they could risk creating a permanently non-upwardly mobile worker class.
I believe George W. Bush to deserve a place on Mt. Rushmore more than Teddy Roosevelt does. But President Roosevelt made a great point about ideals Republican Party you're talking about when he said that there was no room for the "hyphenated American."
The only way to keep America open to immigrants of all nationalities, races and cultures is to ensure there's an America for them to come to. That at least means losing the Spanish-only public school classes, controlling the border, elimninating double-citizenship. Those sorts of measures are not anti-immigrant by any means--- they are in the tradition of "the shining city on the hill".