Free Republic

If President George W. Bush had given his May 15 speech calling for immigration reform five years earlier, we would have believed him. Now, after five years of doing nothing to protect our borders, he is not credible. The problems he eloquently expressed didn't just emerge this year. They existed when he took office and throughout the last five years when he did nothing to correct them. These problems include: * The pitiful number Border Patrol agents. * The millions of illegal immigrants smuggled into the United States across the desert or in crowded 18-wheelers. * The dangerous policy called...

With their get tough on immigrants stance, Republicans have blown an opportunity to guarantee a GOP majority in perpetuityIn an outdoor press conference held across the street from the Capitol last week, Representative Tom Tancredo—the Colorado Republican who has made a name for himself, momentarily, by bashing illegal immigrants—pretended to be mystified by his more moderate Senate colleagues. "Who are you responding to?" he asked of them. "Nobody," he answered for them. None of the gazillions of citizen-patriots calling his office had expressed anything but dismay over the illegal aliens—a term that makes it sound as if the country were...

Here's the irony of President Bush's speech to the nation on Monday night about the need for comprehensive immigration reform: If he had given the exact same speech two or three years ago, many conservatives would have been quite pleased. Not today. The reaction to Bush's speech among conservatives was, to put it kindly, less than favorable. The base of the party may still like this president, but they don't trust him when it comes to dealing with illegal immigration. Why not? For one thing, President Bush has done plenty of talking about illegal immigration before but is perceived to...

George W. Bush’s speech to the nation on May 15, 2006 highlighting deployment of the National Guard to the Mexican border represents an aggressive policy of racist, anti-immigrant demonization and hysteria. It was a demagogic attempt to mobilize the conservative base and appeal to fear in the lead-up to the November Election, and impact the current Senate debate. Bush’s call for ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ includes predominantly punitive, exploitative measures that belie the democratic traditions of our country. His proposals to maintain 6,000 National Guard troops at the border and increase facilities to imprison immigrants constitute the domestic side of...

WASHINGTON -- I do not doubt the president's sincerity in wanting to humanize and regularize the lives of America's 11 million illegal aliens. But good intentions are not enough. For decades, the well-traveled road from the Mexican border to the barrios of Los Angeles has been paved with such intentions. They begat the misguided immigration policy that created the crisis that necessitated the speech that purports to offer, finally, the ``comprehensive'' solution. Hardly. The critical element -- border enforcement -- is farcical. President Bush promises to increase the number of border agents. That was promised in the Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty legislation...

What the president's immigration speech and "The DaVinci Code" have in common. What was missing in the president's approach the other night was the expression, or suggestion, of context. The context was a crisis that had gone unanswered as it has built, the perceived detachment of the political elite from people on the ground, and a new distance between the president and his traditional supporters. The president would have done well to signal that he knew he was coming late to the party, as it were; that he'd come to rethink his previous stand, or lack of a stand, and...

Hispanic American Coalition, You Don't Speak for Me!, Joins With House Leaders to React to President Bush's Address and to Oppose Senate Amnesty Plan WASHINGTON, May 17 /PRNewswire/ -- You Don't Speak for Me!, a new national coalition of American Hispanics that supports immigration enforcement, is joining with nine members of the House of Representatives to respond to President Bush's Monday evening address to the nation and to urge the Senate to pass an immigration enforcement only bill. Members of the You Don't Speak for Me! coalition will be renewing their call for swift Senate action on an enforcement only...

If Republican leaders continue down the path of being overly concerned with alienating Hispanic voters they will only bring on greater damage upon themselves. It takes no expansive imagination to understand why Democrats want to continue being the welcoming party for anyone who can arrive in the country, legally or otherwise. You can bet the GOP's illegal immigration appeasement mentality is behind Republican's crumbling support numbers along with other issues such as fiscal conservatism. At this point in time there is a narrow window of opportunity for the GOP to turn the tables and royally put the Democrats between a...

Among the tiny handful of Americans who still clung to the illusion that President Bush might want to truly address and correct the illegal immigration crisis, it only took the first moments of his May 15 speech to dispel all hope. Though conceding, seemingly for the first time, that the invasion from Mexico is indeed a problem, the President immediately fell back into the standard diatribe that has underscored Washington’s indifference to the American people on this matter. Referring to the invaders as “decent people who work hard,” the President sought to dilute the fact that their presence here represents...

MARIETTA - President Bush's plan to control the border with Mexico is splitting political fences in unexpected ways in Georgia. Members of Cobb's Congressional delegation, who typically serve as dutiful party cheerleaders for Bush, found themselves at odds with the president Tuesday. But Latino activists who routinely split with Republican Party platforms, say they believe a plan announced by Bush to reform U.S. immigration laws gives them hope that compassion is not absent from increasingly hostile political rhetoric. "The president indicated he's moving in a direction that's more in line with the ideas we have supported," said Tisha Tallman, regional...

WASHINGTON - Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, who has pushed a tough border security bill through the House, accused President Bush on Wednesday of abandoning the legislation after asking for many of its provisions. "He basically turned his back on provisions of the House-passed bill, a lot of which we were requested to put in the bill by the White House," Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., angrily told reporters in a conference call. "That was last fall when we were drafting the bill, and now the president appears not to be interested in it at all." Sensenbrenner chairs the House Judiciary Committee and would be...

When Will Republicans Wake Up? May 17, 2006 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I want to start by going back to yesterday's program, about 24 hours ago, and I want to review what I said leading into a discussion of President Bush's speech RUSH ARCHIVE: Let's get to the president's speech on immigration last night. What you saw, what you heard, I think, is a sincere leader trying to lead the nation. Then we got the third rail of third rails here, illegal immigration, and the horses are out of the barn on this. You can lock the door to the barn...

The bottom-line question about President Bush's speech Monday night is whether or not it demonstrated he is finally serious about securing the U.S.-Mexico border. The answer is a resounding and exasperated no! The illegal immigration crisis now threatens to mark George Bush's legacy the way the Iran hostage crisis marked Jimmy Carter's. The question is how long America will be held hostage. Back in 1980, voters could retaliate against Carter for his feeble response to the hostage crisis by throwing him out of office. Voters cannot throw Bush out for his feeble response to illegal immigration, but they can throw...

May 17, 2006--Thirty-nine percent (39%) of Americans agree with President Bush's approach on the immigration issue. An equal number disagree, while 22% are not sure. Just 60% of Republicans agree with the President on this issue. These results are from a Rasmussen Reports national opinion survey taken the night after the President's nationally televised address on the topic. Typically, a Presidential address will increase support for a President's policy approach by several percentage points. Seventy-nine percent (79%) of Americans support strict employer penalties to help reduce illegal immigration. When given a choice between three options, three-fifths (63%) say employer penalties...

President Bush's address from the Oval Office on border security and illegal immigration failed to satisfy either advocates of amnesty or those demanding that the government secure our borders and ports. Whether by design or not, however, the president did manage to advance public awareness of both crises. The president finally acknowledged the unsustainable social and economic burdens of permitting millions of illegal aliens to forge documents, pressure our public schools and hospitals and overtax our local and state budgets. And the president, in asking for more border patrol officers and sending 6,000 National Guard troops to our southern border...

ON DEC. 17, 2004, President Bush signed the National Intelligence Reform Act, which, among other things, required that the federal government hire 2,000 new Border Patrol agents a year for five years, starting in 2006. In the 2006 budget Bush proposed, he funded exactly 210 Border Patrol agents. That single act is a more accurate reflection of his border security priorities than his Monday night speech. Under President Bush, the number of Border Patrol agents has risen to just over 12,000. But the agency has become much less effective. In 1995, the Border Patrol arrested more than 1.3 million illegals....

<p>I searched but did not see a thread already open for tonights speech. I think this is the most important speech the President will probably make for the remainder of his term.</p>