Thread: BUSH: Employer Fuel Crisis on Border

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Posted on Fri, Jun. 02, 2006



Bush: Employers fuel crisis on border


The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — President Bush told the nation’s most prominent business group Thursday that “unscrupulous” employers have contributed to the illegal immigration crisis in the United States by knowingly hiring undocumented workers.

The president called for steep new penalties on those exploiting the shadow economy.

As part of his emerging public campaign for immigration legislation now pending in Congress, Bush visited the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to emphasize his focus on enforcement and combat the conservative complaint that his immigration proposals add up to amnesty for millions of foreigners violating U.S. immigration law.

Bush’s speech came hours before his administration reached an agreement with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to send the California National Guard to the Mexican border. Schwarzenegger criticized Bush’s plan to dispatch 6,000 National Guard troops to the Mexican border to bolster overwhelmed Border Patrol agents, but he agreed to contribute 1,000 troops as long as the federal government picked up the full cost.

Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the U.S. population of legal immigrants would increase by nearly 20 million over the next decade if the recently passed Senate immigration bill becomes law, and taxpayers would spend more than $50 billion to operate a new guest-worker program and pay for extra welfare, Social Security and public health care costs.

But the cost of absorbing the newcomers would be offset by a boost of $66 billion in federal revenue from income taxes and payroll taxes generated by the temporary guest- worker program, along with fees that immigrants must pay to participate, the report said.

Critics said the report does not take into account the 950,000 newcomers who enter the country legally under current immigration law, bringing the 10-year total of new immigrants to about 30 million.

President Bush told the nation’s most prominent business group Thursday that “unscrupulous” employers have contributed to the illegal immigration crisis in the United States by knowingly hiring undocumented workers.

Hey Bush, you have got to be kidding. You are preaching to the choir. He is just now saying that we should punish employers. He has had the power since his first day in office to do just that. He could have always directed the Attorney General to see that our existing laws are enforced. I am not impressed that he is just now talking about what he should have done years ago.