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Article published Dec 4, 2005
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Guest worker plan the stuff of fairy tales

Bill Thompson

In case you missed it, someone finally woke up President Bush on the issue of illegal immigration.

Last week, the president spent two days trumpeting his prescription to cure the federal government's long-standing failure to police our borders. Bush proposed hardening our southern border with more guards, more gadgets and more low-tech solutions like fences. He also pledged not to go wobbly on employers who hire illegals.

"We want to make it clear that when people violate immigration laws, they're going to be sent home, and they need to stay at home," the president said last Monday in Tucson, Ariz., a city of about 512,000 people. The setting was appropriate because that's roughly how many illegals stream across America's borders each year.

It's doubtful Bush will find a coalition of the willing in Congress. Lawmakers will likely succumb to Fortune 500 types who will refuse to give up their cheap labor, which gluts the job market and allows businesses to avoid offering decent wages for those jobs Americans "won't" take, and to equally tiresome liberal charges of racism and reminders that America is a "nation of immigrants."

Meanwhile, Bush stubbornly clings to his plan for a "temporary" guest worker program.

"People in this debate must recognize that we will not be able to effectively enforce our immigration laws until we create a temporary worker program," Bush said last week, reiterating something he's wanted since becoming president.

In a statement on his Web site, U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns, a member of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, opposes these thinly veiled attempts at amnesty. Simple fairness and rewarding lawbreakers are two of Stearns' concerns.

But the Ocala Republican also points out that "illegal immigration is not a victimless crime."

He cites data from the Federation for American Immigration Reform that shows as much as 50 percent of wage loss among low-skilled U.S. workers can be attributed to illegal immigration. Americans also spend $15 billion to provide welfare and other public assistance to illegal immigrants, according to Stearns.

One wonders whether Bush's remarks caused a shudder in the forces that drive Marion County's economy - the construction, service and equestrian industries, the latter of which is notoriously touchy on the subject.

Whatever the fallout, illegal immigration is something Bush, thankfully, can no longer afford to ignore. The president had to latch onto something at home, not half a world away, that Middle America really cares about. In this case, it is the swift, certain and likely permanent transformation of their communities from immigration, both legal and illegal.

State and local officials in places like Arizona, which along with New Mexico has declared a state of emergency because of the overflow of illegals, and California have complained for years that their budgets and personnel are overwhelmed by educating, medicating, housing and policing illegal immigrants.

Bush's strategy includes: returning Mexican immigrants to their hometowns instead of just letting them go at the border; ending the crazy policy of simply releasing non-Mexicans on the street if their home country won't take them back within a set time, augmenting that with 2,000 new beds for detainees, for a total of 20,000; and cracking down on document fraud and employers who hire illegals.

Most of what Bush calls for is as logical as it is overdue. But real reform is hobbled by the guest worker program.

He wants to allow workers to stay here for a set time - one estimate is three years - and then send them home for a furlough before they can come back. Does anyone expect illegals who cross thousands of miles of unforgiving desert and treacherous seas to get here to meekly go back home for a little R&R after they've tasted the fruits of living in America?

"People are coming to put food on the table," the president said in October, explaining the need for a temporary worker provision while signing a $31 billion homeland security bill.

NAFTA was supposed to solve that. Obviously, it hasn't. And once here illegals have almost all the benefits of citizenship. They can get driver's licenses, obtain welfare, health care and other benefits, attend public schools, file lawsuits and as Star-Banner readers learned in a story three months ago, even serve on juries.

Realists understand the president's plan is doomed by deep pockets and politically correctness.

I'm glad the president's snooze is over, but don't expect true reform until he snaps out of his Rip Van Winkle routine regarding the guest worker plan.