San Diego Union Tribune: Bush's guest worker plan still has fatal flaws

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UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

Same old proposal?

Bush's guest worker plan still has fatal flaws

November 29, 2005

There is this old sales gimmick that some retail stores use. They'll put up a sign that reads "Grand Opening." Then, a few months later, they'll put the sign up again hoping to fool customers into thinking that something new is going on.

President Bush is using the same trick as he rolls out his administration's immigration reform plan, again and again. It was back in September 2001 when Bush – while hosting Mexican President Vicente Fox at a state dinner at the White House – first talked about pairing willing Mexican workers with willing U.S. employers. Nearly two and one-half years later, in January 2004, Bush unveiled his plan for a guest worker program. Under the president's plan, millions of workers now in the United States illegally could apply for three-year work visas, with a three-year extension, before returning home. Law and order conservatives in Bush's own party were outraged. They said his guest worker plan amounted to amnesty, and they were right. They also said the president would never get his plan through Congress.

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Yesterday, Bush himself traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border to unveil once again – you guessed it – his immigration reform plan. There was a lot of good in it, from streamlining deportations of illegal immigrants to creating a tamper-proof identification card to building new roads and new fences along the border where appropriate. But the heart of it was the same three-legged stool, with the same emphasis on a temporary worker plan.

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If Bush had put greater emphasis on going after employers during his border visit, then the event might have been much more significant. It might even have been historic. Instead, it was little more than that which we've already experienced plenty of: a photo-op with a politician standing at the border and talking tough about illegal immigration without the slightest interest in doing what is really necessary to curb it.

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