Thread: BUSH IS EMBARRASSED, LET'S CRY - NOT

June 9, 2007

His own Republican Party won't support him when it comes to illegal immigration, writes Anne Davies in Washington.

AT ITS height in 1999-2000, the flow of boat people into Australia reached just over 4000 a year. In the US, many times that number of illegal immigrants arrive each year, although there are no exact figures.

The steady stream of illegal arrivals, mainly across the Mexican border, has become a flood in the past decade, leading many Americans to believe the country has lost control of its borders. There are now somewhere between 12 million and 15 million "undocumented aliens" - the official description - in the country.

Some just overstay their visas, others make difficult trips with people smugglers, or risk their lives travelling under trucks or crossing the 3140-kilometre border on foot.

It has made immigration - and what to do about it - the hottest issue in the US after the Iraq War - and one that will be central in defining the 2008 presidential election and the legacy of President George Bush.

On Thursday, Mr Bush's reform bill was dealt an embarrassing defeat in the Senate. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, withdrew it after it became clear that the Republicans were unlikely to support the legislation because it was not tough enough.

"I am deeply disappointed that so many of our Republican colleagues have blocked tough, fair and practical immigration reform," the Democratic leader said. "The White House has had six months to work with Senate Republicans toward a solution, yet it failed to show the necessary leadership to get this bill passed."

Since the bill was announced three weeks ago, conservative Republicans have openly savaged the legislation. Its only hope for success lay with the Democrats and a handful of moderate Republicans.

Even moderate Republican presidential candidate, Rudolph Giuliani, hopped into the debate, calling it a "typical Washington mess". But other Republicans have gone much further, calling it an amnesty for illegal immigrants that would lead to a flood of immigrants. Some, such as Tom Tancredo, a member of the House of Representatives who is also running for president, want a halt to immigration all together.

It remains to be seen whether Mr Bush will pursue it and what the fallout will be for one of the leading Republican presidential hopefuls, John McCain, the main architect of the compromise.

The main elements of Mr Bush's bill was to create a path for illegal immigrants already in the country so they could become citizens over a period of 14 years. He argued that this was a humanitarian and sensible thing to do because it would allow authorities to collect data on people and deport undesirables.

It also included a "guest worker" program that would allow up to 200,000 to work in the US for the next five years, provided they returned home at regular intervals.

Instead of favouring family reunion, the bill planned to introduce a points system, similar to Australia's, which would endorse skilled labour and require fluency in English.

It also included additional funds for border patrol and a 1100 kilometre fence along part of the Mexico-US border, a measure that was aimed at satisfying the conservative critics of the legislation.

It is not known if Mr Bush will try to reintroduce the bill. But the political damage he has suffered, both by championing the unpopular bill then failing, is enormous. Two polls this week put the President's approval rating at an all-time low of 29 per cent and 33 per cent. Most of that can be attributed to the Iraq war, but the immigration decision will not have helped.

Some say immigration reform is a personal issue for Mr Bush. Coming from the border state of Texas, he has grown up with Hispanic friends and colleagues. His brother Jeb married a woman of Hispanic background and he has seen first hand the suffering of illegal migrants.

Others say the very future of the Republican Party is at stake and that Mr Bush's change of direction is motivated by a pragmatic view that the party needs to attract a greater share of the Hispanic vote in the future.

In July 2005 Hispanics made up 14 per cent of the population, or 42 million, overtaking African-Americans as the largest minority racial group.

They are also the fastest growing. The US Census Bureau projects that by 2050 they will constitute 24 per cent of the population.

But for many Republicans, Mr Bush's bill is little more than an amnesty that could open the floodgates to illegal immigrants and add to the Republican Party's woes. They characterise it as a national security issue.

Republicans are also more worried about the cultural impact of immigration on American values, while there has been a significant decline of this view among more moderate and liberal Democrats, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Centre. This sharp polarisation of attitudes to immigration also needs to be balanced against economic reality: the US economy depends on this supply of cheap labour.

Undocumented aliens now make up nearly 5 per cent of the workforce and without them, states such as California would have a serious shortage of unskilled labour.

There would be no one to pick fruit, work on farms, garden, wash dishes, clean the homes of the middle class and make beds in hotels.

Yet for illegal immigrants, their existence in the US is parlous: no health care, no social security - despite the fact that an estimated $US7 billion ($8.3 billion) a year is paid into the social security trust under fraudulent numbers - poor working conditions and constant fear of being deported, which would mean being separated from children born in the US who automatically have US citizenship.

As Senator McCain put it: to do nothing is to agree to a silent, de facto amnesty.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/embarr ... ntentSwap1

clean the homes of the middle class

Middle class Americans can't afford to hire people to clean their homes. No one but me has ever cleaned my house.

"The White House has had six months to work with Senate Republicans toward a solution, yet it failed to show the necessary leadership to get this bill passed."

This shouldn't surprise you Harry Reid, the white house hasn't shown any leadership for the past 6 years.