Thread: Bush's Proposals Get A Lukewarm Response

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SAN DIEGO -- Miguel Diaz thinks sending National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border may have mixed results.

The good news, he said, is that fewer Mexican migrants may die trying to sneak across the border in remote mountains and deserts. The bad news, he said, is that more troops may lead to more violence.

"I'd call it 50-50," said Diaz, 24, after waiting 90 minutes Monday to cross the border from his home in Tijuana, Mexico, to his construction job in San Diego.

Diaz's remarks reflected ambivalence along the U.S.-Mexican border to President Bush's immigration plan that in part would beef up the military presence there. Some said it would restore order; others said it would heighten tension. Some said it would do both.

"It's not going to please everybody on either side, but I see that he's trying to work toward a positive resolution to something that definitely needs to be fixed," Henry Rodriguez, chaplain at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego. "The system is broken down."

Bush endorsed a plan to send up to 6,000 National Guardsmen to the border, give identification cards for legal foreign workers and give millions of illegal immigrants an eventual path to citizenship.

Tom Brundy, who says migrants trample through his alfalfa farm along the border in Calexico, about 120 miles east of San Diego, would welcome troops. He said it would help lower the death toll among migrants trying to cross, which reached about 500 last year.

"The Border Patrol is overwhelmed and they need help," said Brundy, who also supports Bush's proposal authorizing temporary workers. "Many in Washington say, 'Hire 1,000 agents,' but do you know how long it would take to hire and train them?"

In Texas, Carolyn Parker, 78, a longtime El Paso resident, said her concern is the money and manpower pledged to the effort. "That was just a bunch of platitudes," Parker said. "All of these plans are just plans without funding."

In Los Angeles, some members of the We Are America coalition _ labor, community and religious groups that helped organize the recent pro-immigration marches _ shook their heads as they watched the speech.

"We will now be two friendly countries with a militarized border in between. Please tell me why you have to have soldiers to meet people who are coming over to get a job. They are not a danger," said Louis Velasquez, a representative of the Los Angeles Roman Catholic archdiocese.

Bush's plan also was criticized by some members of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a civilian group concerned about the continued flow of illegal immigrants across the border.

Bob Wright, head of the group in New Mexico, said Bush's call for a guest worker program would drive down U.S. wages. "They are hiring them because they can hire them cheap," he said.

As for the proposed National Guard deployment, Al Garza, national executive director of the Minuteman in Huachuca City, Ariz., estimated that the plan would work only if 30,000 to 40,000 troops were deployed. Anything short of that, he said, would be pointless.

Longtime border merchant Ernesto Chavez said the proposed call-up of Guardsmen is long overdue, but probably won't do much to secure the border.

"I think it's about time _ but I don't think that's going to do it, because you need a heck of a lot more than that," said Chavez, owner of a stationery store in downtown Nogales, Ariz. "You need to really, really seal the border or you need to punish the employers that are hiring these illegal people."

The head of a New Mexico-based immigrants' rights group suggested stepping back and looking at other strategies because the already "heightened militarization of the border" hasn't worked.

"We've seen Operation Gatekeeper, Operation Keep the Line, Operation Safeguard. These are major Border Patrol initiatives that have been implemented since the 1980s that have made it more costly and more dangerous for immigrants to come here," said Marcela Diaz, executive director of Somos Un Pueblo Unido.

At migrant shelter in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across the border from El Paso, 10 Mexicans and Central Americans watched a soap opera while Bush's speech was broadcast live on another channel.

Raul Garduno, of El Salvador, said the National Guard wouldn't stop him from trying to sneak across the Rio Grande. "Need drives me to cross," said Garduno, 28. "I have no work in my country so if the soldiers turn me back, I will try again."

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