Bush talks immigration

If you watched Bush’s speech last night, then you deserve to pour yourself another drink. I half-listened on the radio and wanted a martini every time he said assimilation, amnesty, or security. Fortunately for me, I was cooking and could not keep up after the first. Mostly, my impression was this is complete, rambling bullshit from the start. When a good portion of your party’s leadership and power structure is under some form of legal cloud, spouting platitudes like “we are a nation of laws” is just a bit more than disingenuous. Hell, the rumors are flying that Bush’s right-hand man, Karl Rove, may be indicted this week. So that one statement sort of gives you the flavor of what was to follow.

Basically, we are going to send 6,000 National Guard troops to the border in a support role to the existing Border Control patrols. Our border with Mexico is something like 1,900 miles long. That means that we will need to pull guard troops from several other states beyond those along the border. Good luck selling that. What are we to do with the people we catch? We have no place to hold them. All of the “catch and release” talk was just talk. It was cover for a bigger problem. The hurricane and fire seasons are coming and damn few governors are going to be persuaded to part with their NG contingent. The big issue for state executives is disaster response. Katrina casts a long shadow for politicians; the Guard was the first institution that stepped into New Orleans and helped restore some order. No smart Governor is going to be caught with too few Guard units when one million people in their state have lost power due to a hurricane, an earthquake hits, or a few hundred thousand acres catch fire. That is political suicide in the West, Southwest, and South after the seeing the disastrous federal reaction to Katrina. If Bush thinks that the eastern Upper Midwest and Northeast are going to be eager to comply, he needs to think again. Bush is really disliked there. So saddle up Idaho, Kansas, Utah, and Oklahoma – it may be a very busy year. In addition, many Guard units have deployed recently to Iraq and Afghanistan. A stretch on the Mexican border is going to be about as popular as Louis Farrakhan at a Klan rally with Guardsmen, their families, and the Govs that give their orders.

The Decider has also decided that we need a guest worker program. This seems like a pretty reasonable idea to me but I have no idea how something like this would be implemented so I cannot speak to the effectiveness of such a plan. Unfortunately, neither did our Dear Leader. He knows that the Devil is in the details and conspicuously avoided saying anything that could be mistaken as such. I guess he gets points for giving a correct answer but not full credit because he didn’t show his work. In addition, deportation was ruled out. Right… This whole plan will not wash with the Conservatives if we are not shipping the lawbreakers across the border by the busload. Again, either this is bullshit or he is completely out of touch with where the Tancredo wing of his party is. Anything that smacks of amnesty is a dog that will not hunt with his base. He proposed just that for illegals that have been here for a while, have jobs, and otherwise clean records. Again, I guess he gets some credit for saying it, but any such plan is DOA in the current Congress.

All of that said, I wanted to smash the fucking television when he spoke about penalties for employers that hire undocumented workers. Warning – serious cursing begins here. Bush wants to force all businesses to ensure that employers hire only documented workers. If they fail to do so, serious penalties would be enforced. Again, bullshit and here's why. The construction, agriculture, and hospitality industries employ a HUGE number of illegal workers. Coincidentally, companies in these industries give HUGE amounts of money to the Republican Party. Not coincidentally, Bush (motherfucker) decried rampant document fraud as a reason to not hold businesses accountable for hiring illegals right now. These companies are just too stupid to know if they are hiring illegals. Huge monster bullshit. I guess the real problem is farm workers from Honduras faking visas with a napkin and a Crayola 64 pack. Bush wants to combat forgery with a biometric identity card to guarantee a worker’s legitimacy. What the fucking fuck? How long with that take to get off the ground? How many people think the average roofing contractor cares about a worker’s status? Claiming documentation forgery is a transparent cover for the desire to not hold employers accountable. If he wanted to get serious about enforcement, fines and prison terms for hiring undocumented workers would rival those of drug dealing. Ignorance would not be a viable excuse for breaking the law. Immigration raids would be nabbing people by the thousands and actually have some place to process and hold arrestees. The executives of retail, food processing and construction firms would be lined up around the block at the nearest federal court awaiting trial.

These are the consequences to a real enforcement regime. Businesses are the biggest beneficiary of illegal immigration. This administration has a long record of supporting business interests over almost everything else. I seriously doubt that Bush and the Republicans have the balls to heavily sanction their corporate masters now that he is a lame duck. Serious reform would require serious people. These folks ain’t it.