President Bush On Immigration

I didn't get a chance to hear the President's speech on immigration yesterday, but WorldNetDaily published the text. I'm not impressed.

My first skimming of the speech revealed the same old tired terms he has used repeatedly (and unconvincingly) in the past. People "live in the shadows of our society." We're "a nation of immigrants." There are "jobs Americans are not doing."

Spare me! People are obviously not living in the shadows. They stand on the street corners waiting for a job. They go to our hospitals, send their kids to school, and protest en masse in our streets.

Yes, we're a nation of immigrants, but they were legal immigrants. And they wanted to stay here and become Americans. People who come here illegally, with no intention of becoming American are not immigrants, and we should not encourage them to come.

And the jobs Americans are not doing are the ones for which the employers want to pay sub-standard wages. The market has not been able to adjust itself, because there's been an influx of illegals who are willing to work for pay that Americans are by law not permitted to accept.

We already have guest-worker programs. One of them is called a "green card." Another, in the tech industry, is the H1B visa, which lets IT workers come over to do a job for a certain company, and then they have to go back home. Without being allowed to get in line for citizenship. So why do we need another guest-worker program?

Americans overwhelmingly want the border shut down to illegal crossing, and we want it to remain open for legal crossing. So what's the President's solution to border crossing? More Border Patrol (he's said that before but not come through with the request for enough funding), temporary help from the National Guard (which I understand isn't allowed to do military-like things within the country, so what's the point?), and this:

We will employ motion sensors infrared cameras and unmanned aerial vehicles to prevent illegal crossings.

How on earth will motion sensors, infrared cameras, and unmanned aerial vehicles prevent the illegal crossing of our border? When the motion sensors sense motion, and the infrared cameras pick up human shapes, will the unmanned aerial vehicles fly over to them and ram into them until the people go back into Mexico? Will we shoot the people from the unmanned aerial vehicles? How exactly will knowing where the people are prevent their crossing?

Sure, we can send Border Patrol agents out into the field to intercept the people, but wouldn't a big fat double fence, with razor wire on top and with six-foot ditches on each side to prevent cars from ramming the fence, be a better way to "prevent illegal crossings?"

And the President's plan is only as good as the Congress that has to draft and pass legislation. Even a perfect presidential plan can come out of Congress in such a pathetically sorry state that it's unrecognizable from the President's proposal. My prediction of what the Senate will do to his proposal is to drop the funding of new Border Patrol agents, drop the funding of both a fence and the high-tech detection equipment, speed up the conversion of illegal aliens into citizens (and probably drop the English-proficiency requirement), and then take the cut funding and build more bridges and railroads to nowhere instead.

Build the fence first. When the President and Congress have proven they have the cojones to at least do that, then we'll talk about the rest. I won't trust them to get it right until I see them do the hard stuff first.

Update:

The Senate has already voted not to ensure border enforcement before allowing citizenship for illegals, as WorldNetDaily reported today.

In a 55-40 vote, the Senate dismissed an amendment by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga, to bar the federal government from altering the status of any illegal immigrant until every border security provision in the immigration bill had been implemented and the Homeland Security secretary certified the border is secure.

A supporter of the proposal, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said Congress has "no business passing a comprehensive immigration bill without making sure, first, that the border will be secure."

I agree. But 55 senators don't.