http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006 ... 3445.shtml

Saturday, April 1, 2006 11:30 a.m. EST
Bill Clinton Backs Bush on Guest Workers


Ex-president Bill Clinton offered a partial endorsement of President Bush's guest worker immigration reform plan Friday night, saying his successor had some "good idea[s]" on how to solve what he described as "an exceedingly complicated" problem.

"I think the president has a good idea in terms of wanting to give people a path to citizenship and have increased border enforcement," Clinton told CNN's "Larry King Live."

"That's also the idea behind the bill sponsored by Senator McCain and Senator Kennedy in the Senate," he added.

Clinton criticized the Bush plan as too lax in one regard, saying: "I don't think this guest worker program that the president supports should be totally unlimited . . . I think if there's just no limit on it then it's going to be very difficult for us to enforce the existing labor laws."

The former president blasted HR 4437, the immigration reform plan passed by the House that would build a border fence and deny some benefits to illegals already in the country.

"I think the House provisions have by and large been too punitive," he told CNN.

Clinton did, however, warn that lax border enforcement posed a national security risk, contending that the current policy "does give people an opportunity to disguise themselves if they're terrorists and also to run drugs across, which does happen."