http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/131849

Washington
Bush: Illegals' employers get a slap on wrist
Houston Chronicle
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.02.2006

WASHINGTON — President Bush compared existing penalties for employers hiring illegal immigrants to parking tickets, saying lawmakers must work out their differences on competing proposals to overhaul immigration law and make the penalties tougher.
"It's a difficult task," Bush said in a speech Thursday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "Yet the difficulty of this task is no excuse for avoiding it."
Bush travels next week to Laredo, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as to Artesia, N.M., and Omaha, Neb., in an effort to win support for an immigration bill that he can sign.
Appearing before the chamber, a national business group that supports a moderate approach to dealing with illegal immigration, Bush called for bigger fines for errant employers and tamper-proof identity cards for workers.
"The fine for a business that fails to check an employee's ID can be as low as $100. You might as well pay a speeding ticket," Bush said, adding that the penalty for knowingly hiring an illegal immigrant runs from $250 to $2,000.
"These low penalties, frankly, provide little incentive for dishonest businesses to obey the law," he said.
The tougher penalties are part of a larger reform package that Bush is pushing Congress to pass by the end of the year.
He supports a Senate bill that includes a guest-worker program, tougher border enforcement, a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who have spent years in this country, and a requirement that they pay fines and back taxes and show a proficiency in English. Both of Texas' Republican senators, Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, voted against the legislation.
Last December, the House passed a bill that would make it a felony to enter the country illegally or to help those who do. The House legislation would also increase border security and strictly enforce immigration laws.
Rep. John Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called the Senate bill a "dishonest" attempt at cloaking amnesty under another name.
When lawmakers return from a recess next week, they are expected to start reconciling the two bills — a job made even more complicated by election-year politics. All of the seats in the House and 33 in the Senate are on the November ballot.
Bush rejected the charge that the Senate bill's path to citizenship was amnesty and said the idea of deporting an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants was "wrong and unrealistic."
"Listen, I appreciate the members are acting on deeply felt principles. I understand that," Bush said.
But, he said, "there's a rational middle ground between granting an automatic path to citizenship for every illegal immigrant and a program that requires every illegal immigrant to leave."

This pathetic excuse of an administration rarely enforces laws against hiring invaders as it is... it's worse than the last administration.