Post-Address Thoughts...Bush's Plan...Latino's Thoughts...

"...we do not yet have full control of the border, and I am determined to change that." President George W. Bush, Presidential Address May 15, 2006.

Well, short speech, about twenty minutes long. Basically, Bush's plan revolves around two things: sending National Guard troops to the southern border, and providing a Temporary Worker Program.

Bush's plan calls for six thousand troops to be deployed to the southern U.S. border with Mexico. These troops will set up shop to help the Border Patrol with surveillance issues, installing cameras, building fences (Jesus, that always pops up somehow, doesn't it?), etc. Bush says the National Guard will not help the Border Patrol apprehend illegal immigrants. The number of National Guard troops will decrease after one year, when as Bush explains, they will slowly be replaced by new Border Patrol agents. By 2008, Bush projects that the Border Patrol will have an additional six thousand agents to be sent along the U.S./Mexico border.

Bush also informed us that he will do away with catch and release. As a result, he predicts, this will mean that immigrants will no longer want to come into the U.S. illegally.

The President wants to incorporate a Temporary Worker Program. He says this will be a legal path, and more orderly entrance into the United States. He believes this program will meet the needs of the economy, reduce human smuggling, and will replace illegal workers with legal taxpayers.

President Bush believes that the millions of illegal immigrants in the country should not be given amnesty, but under the Temporary Worker Program, they will be given the opportunity to provide for their families for a designated time. At the end of which, they will be sent back home. People remaining in the United States will have to pay a penalty for coming into the country illegally, and he'd want each immigrant to learn English. After all, according to Bush, English is the means by which someone can go from "picking crops to opening a grocery store."

You've got to be kidding me. A lot of rhetoric for easing the qualms of critics and supporters alike, while not really providing any realistic long term solutions for a problem that goes beyond that of someone working in this country illegally or not. There needs to be more responsibility from countries like Mexico. Our illegal immigration problem is not an issue of how many troops, agents, civilians we put along the border. It's not about erecting any "fence". Corporations in this country need to take responsibility for hiring illegal workers in the first place. They should pay their share of penalties in all of this, and the whole, "it's hard for them to know who has legal documentation and who doesn't, because there's a lot of document fraud out there". Please, how much kissing ass did these corporations do to get the President of the United States to say that? Rest assured, if any middle or lower class citizen in this country used an excuse like that, well...

As for countries like Mexico, they need to start providing a means for their working class to make a better living for themselves in Mexico. Until they do, this whole temporary worker program isn't going to amount to a damn thing, if we still have millions upon millions of immigrants who are left with no other choice but to take their chances in the hot desert, or brush country sun, the trailer of an 18-wheeler, or being stopped by a Border Patrol Agent, because things in their home country just don't cut it. And they never have for the working class poor in that country.