A sober, reasoned analysis of Bush's speech

[jmowreader]

There's a very old joke about an author who receives a rejection notice from a publisher. "Parts of your manuscript are both good and original. Unfortunately, the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good."

So it is with pResident Bush's latest attempt at public speaking. Thanks to DUer newsguyatl, I was treated to a Bushism-free version of his address.

Bush isn't the first world leader to come up with a scheme like this. A little East German guy named Erich Honecker--who was chief of construction troops in August 1961--devised it first. Bush's speech wasn't so much an outline of his plans to strengthen the border against illegal immigration as it was his announcement that he plans to rebuild the Berlin Wall.

We can't call it the Berlin Wall because it isn't. Let's call it the Bush Wall.

The proposals Bush laid out tonight are far-reaching:

* Construction of the Bush Wall.
* Issuance of biometric identification cards, probably to every person who is legally entitled to be in the United States and eventually including US citizens.
* Massive increases in Border Patrol staffing.
* National Guard infill of Border Patrol units while new Patrol agents are recruited and trained.
* Improvements in deportation procedures.

So far so bad. Except for the fact that we're trying to keep people out and not in, this looks very much like the work of East Germany's Border Command Central--the unit responsible for securing the Berlin Wall. And then it gets curious:

* Guest worker program.

This is really the strangest part of the whole program. It shows how utterly clueless the administration really is on this problem. Under this program, a Mexican who's willing to pay for a criminal background check can apply to be a guest worker. As a guest worker he'll be employed at a legal wage with a company that will pay the employer's share of his unemployment and worker's comp payments and withhold his federal and state income taxes and FICA payments. He's going to do this because, according to Mr. Bush, there are jobs Americans won't do.

That sounds great until you understand that the reason Americans won't do these jobs is that, for the most part, they're never offered them. An illegal will work for three or four dollars an hour--good money in parts of Mexico--and you don't have to pay unemployment or worker's comp on them. And if they get injured at work...hey, no problem, you can just fire them even if they weren't at fault.

Bush knows this. He has to.

Don't believe that Bush is serious about curbing the illegal immigration problem, because he isn't. Please note that in his entire speech he never once spoke of penalties for hiring illegal immigrants. He spoke at length of some really bizarre scheme for allowing illegals to become citizens, starting with an unspecified "meaningful penalty for breaking the law" followed by a requirement that they "pay their taxes." I feel that most illegals, given the choice of paying a large fine plus a hefty back-tax bill (and remember, the IRS charges interest) then waiting for a number of years to be sworn in as citizens, or continuing to take their chances, most will continue to take their chances.

The only nod he made toward the corporations who employ illegal aliens was a mention of this new biometric identification card. With it, no employer will ever have reason to not know the legality of the workers he employs. It sounds great, right? Actually it doesn't. We already have usable methods to determine the legality of workers. The problem isn't forged documentation. It's day labor, where a worker toils all day and receives an envelope of cash that night and the foreman does his best Willy Wonka imitation and tells his workers, "I don't want to know your names; I can't see where it would make a difference." It's lettuce growers telling their field boss to "get you a truckload'a wetbacks to work these three fields." It's the guy running the rubber baby buggy bumper factory who hires undocumented workers because they know that if they call OSHA about the ten-foot-wide puddle of toluene diisocyanate three feet from the boiler, the boss will call the Migra. Bush didn't discuss any of the reasons people hire illegals. He never will.

If he wants to address illegal immigration he's got to go after the source of the problem--tens of thousands of small businesses who don't want to file paperwork or pay $5.15 per hour to their employees. Drying up the souece of jobs will do far more to stem illegal immigration than asking illegals to pay ten to twelve years worth of back taxes.

The speech was a failure. Like everything else in his life.

[spindrifter]

1. I don't want a freakin' ID card.

I already have damaged my passport by sweating on it when I was in the tropics last year. One of the airlines gave me a ton of static about how the little microdots were messed up and made it hard to register properly on their computer. I can only imagine if someone entrusted me with a sacred ID document what I could do to it.

[China_cat]

9. My passport went through the washing machine

Wiped out all my entry stamps and made it look really funky.

[polemic_realism]

2. good post ..... K&R

the discussion of causality is avoided at all costs

[MADem]

3. Hit the R then....I just did!

Great post, I agree.

[benburch]

4. Ditto. nt

[jerry611]

5. Give me a break

Only wish Bush would get tougher on immigration, along with the rest of congress. I am totally and completely against any form of amnesty. Because we have tried that 7 times, SEVEN TIMES, in the past. And it just doesn't fix the problem.

I also do not believe that our economy can sustain this invasion of immigration. It will drive down YOUR wages. It will make the rich get richer. We are going to be $10 trillion dollars in debt. 40 million Americans don't have health insurance. Personal debt is on the rise. Wages are falling. And we are going to allow 50+ million people into this country? Are we truely this insane? We will be a 3rd world country by 2020!

I want the border secured. I want corporations punished for hiring illegal aliens at slave wages, and I want all the illegals to be deported and wait at the back of the line.

This speech, it's BS. It's nothing but to get his guest worker program passed congress. The corporations need to be guranteed their slave labor.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

14. Seven times? When did they take place?

[Lasher]

15. These are the seven times

1. Immigration and Reform Control Act (IRCA) Amnesty, 1986: A blanket amnesty for some 2.7 million illegal aliens

2. Section 245(i) Amnesty, 1994: A temporary rolling amnesty for 578,000 illegal aliens

3. Section 245(i) Extension Amnesty, 1997: An extension of the rolling amnesty created in 1994

4. Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) Amnesty, 1997: An amnesty for close to one million illegal aliens from Central America

5. Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act Amnesty (HRIFA), 1998: An amnesty for 125,000 illegal aliens from Haiti

6. Late Amnesty, 2000: An amnesty for some illegal aliens who claim they should have been amnestied under the 1986 IRCA amnesty, an estimated 400,000 illegal aliens

7. LIFE Act Amnesty, 2000: A reinstatement of the rolling Section 245(i) amnesty, an estimated 900,000 illegal aliens

8. Nine current bills are vying to be Amnesty No. 8

http://www.numbersusa.com/interests/amnesty_print.html#NACARA#NACARA

[Scriptor Ignotus]

26. I'm with you except for the deportation part

I just don't see how they can feasibly deport 12 million people. Plus I'd rather the gov't not spend millions of dollars dropping people off at the border if they are just going to waltz back in a few weeks later.

[Lib Grrrrl]

31. Oh, God - My Best Wishes To YOU!!!

I got blasted for saying things very similar to what you said!

Hope you got a Kevlar vest!!

I, incidentally, agree with you! I don't friggin' want them here...they WILL drive down our wages...they WILL make it harder for born Americans to get decent-paying jobs...we totally cannot absorb any more people into this country at this time!

And I agree about wanting to severely punish the companies that hire illegal aliens at slave wages.

NOW...for my words...for saying what I felt...I got called a racist, a xenophobe, a bigot...and some made veiled references that I might be a Freeper. And I continued to argue my points...no, I was none of those things, I was just looking out for my own economic self-interest first and foremost...and my fellow born-Americans economic self interest...and the american worker in general.

I explained very carefully that I didn't care if the immigrants were brown, black, yellow, red, white, green, or purple...we just could not afford any more immigration at this time.

and for that, I got blasted. Hope you can do better than I did! Hope you got Kevlar in case you don't. There's some damned vicious people on this site, that would rather attack the messenger than attack the message they don't like, don't want to hear, and don't want to acknowledge.

[TomInTib]

6. Got my 'R'...

great post

[jmowreader]

7. This is what you get for not proofreading

I left out a fairly major point in the original screed. Let's attack it now.

This plan, if implemented, will be the final nail in the National Guard's coffin.

Bush intends to send six thousand National Guard members to the US/MX border to augment the Border Patrol. Figure on the Guardsmen being asked to spend six months in the Persian Gulf, followed by six months on the Mexican border, followed by six months of time at home before rotating back to the Gulf.

The reasons people join the National Guard are many and varied--they wanted to be able to help in times of natural disaster, which has long been a Guard mission; they enjoyed the camaraderie of the military; they like the ability to go to the commissary a couple times a year. But one thing is certain: almost none of the people in the National Guard want to be full-time soldiers. That's what the active Army is for.

A vast number of the people in the National Guard cannot afford to be full-time soldiers. Expect waves of foreclosures and small business failures as the National Guardsmen Bush has patrolling the Mexican border start losing their jobs because they're in the army all the time.

If Bush decides to send National Guard troops to patrol the Mexican border, almost everyone in the National Guard will get out. And you can take that to the bank.

[Dhalgren]

13. Good analysis, very clear, well thought out. Recommended.

There are a couple of problems with the Guard deployment that should be mentioned. You said "almost everyone in the National Guard will get out". I think that it would be more accurate to say that almost everyone will WANT to get out. They may not be allowed to, as many have been "stop-lossed" into what is essentially conscripted service. Also, as the temperature rises on the border and frustrations and loss of hope become more pronounced among the Guard, how long before a serious shooting takes place. These are troops rotating back and forth between Iraq, Afghanistan, home and now the Mexican border. When will the first group of illegals be gunned down? What will be the repercussions? And who will get the prison time for it? This is as bad a debacle looming in the Southwest as we have on-going in the Middle East...

[jmowreader]

22. This is the National Guard. Not the active military.

The easiest way to get out of the National Guard is just to stop coming in. This isn't legal, but people have always done this. Miss two drill weekends in a row and the active duty guy who runs your outfit--all reserve and Guard units have two or three active duty people assigned to them--just pulls out a discharge form, types your name at the top, puts "unit abandonment" down as the reason they're throwing you out, then sends a copy to the National Guard Bureau and keeps one for the file. It's not a huge deal.

Bush may elevate it to a huge deal, but the National Guard figures it's just easier to throw your ass out than it is to keep chasing you down and pleading with you to report for duty.

[smb]

24. Yeah -- He Set SUCH a Good Example!

Bush may elevate it to a huge deal

I would just love to watch the spectacle of George W. Bush attempting to lead a crackdown on people who fail to complete their Guard obligations. :popcorn:

[Dhalgren]

33. I understood from a Guard friend of mine that it was no longer

easy to get out. I may have misunderstood what she was saying, but I took it that the Guard was enforcing enlistment and even extending people. But, again, I could have that wrong. :shrug:

[KoKo]

8. Thanks ...it truly is a "reasoned and sober" account of his speech ....

This proposal sounds really bad and I agree that not mentioning the penalties employers should be paying and repeating that "these are jobs Americans don't want to do" give the "lie" to his whole proposal.

Another Bush screw up to penalize those who don't deserve it while giving "ID" production cards to one of his cronies to manufacture and getting himself off the hook for these companies not to use the legal statutes already on the books. He loves to break the law and make money for his buddies. If Dems could point this out...it would help it get through to those out there who just never seem to understand what he's about.

[jmowreader]

11. Not to mention...

This biometric ID card. I'm going to assume it's something like the Unicard everyone carried in Judge Dredd--a card that inserts into a little machine the police carry around with them that contains everything from your blood type to your criminal record, or at least a barcode that links to your file in the Big Government Mainframe In The Sky.

I'm an employer. I run a wood shop. I don't have a computer. Am I now required to purchase one, with a biometric ID card reader peripheral, if I wish to hire employees? Will this do anything that...y'know, just calling the DMV and asking them if they ever heard of John Smith who lives at 419 14th Street in Centerville...won't do?

You also know they're not going to do anything intelligent like use Secure Digital cards out of digital cameras--a technology that's proven and that uses $20 USB-compatible readers for access. No, instead everyone in America will be required to carry a card that can't be read except in a peripheral the size of a cinder block that costs as much as a used car.

This proposal doesn't seem to have been thought out very well. Perhaps they spent more time teaching Shrub to say "biometric" than they did thinking of whether any of this made sense to someone who doesn't want to live in the Soviet Union?

[Lib Grrrrl]

32. YES

And Bush fails to mention WHY these are jobs Americans don't want to do....they are extremely low-paying jobs. If you paid a decent wage, there's plenty of Americans who would do these jobs.

[jmowreader]

36. Americans would do them for low wages

Well, a lot of them anyway.

It's arguable that you can pay a Mexican MORE than you can pay an American and still save money on your payroll costs.

If you pay an American $5.15/hour, you've then got to pay the employer's part of his payroll taxes, you've got to pay an accountant to track his wages, what have you. Total cost--probably about $7.50-$8.00/hour depending on how cheap your accountant works.

Undocumented workers are a different story. A $6/hour illegal costs you $6/hour.

But anyway...the going rate for Mexican roofers in Robeson County, NC, is $8 per hour. Get a roommate and you can live on $8 per hour in Robeson County, which is a low-cost area to live in. A lot of Americans living in Robeson County would roof homes for $8 per hour, but they'll never be allowed to because the white and black roofing contractors only want to employ Mexicans. (The Lumbee contractors pay well, but they only hire from within the tribe, and of course the Latin contractors hire within their community.)

[Lib Grrrrl]

37. Well, I Have Worked On A Roffing Crew Before

believe it or not, I did. My dad owned a roofing company.

And let me tell you, if it was anyone other than my dad, there's no effin' way I woulda done that kind of work for the shit wages he paid!

[msongs]

10. get your "biometric" cards at the swap meet for $25 or 2 for $40 just like

your social security card, california drivers license, green cards and all the other phony docs available there.

Msongs
www.msongs.com
batik & digital art
mugs and shirts

[dweller]

12. ten to twelve years worth of back taxes?

and the corporations/small businesses will be paying their 10-12 years worth of unemployment and worker's comp payments and federal and state income taxes and FICA payments, along with penalty fees??

oh, my bad. That's what the 'tax cuts' he gives the wealthy are for i guess.


thanks for the analysis. I can't watch the *moron for more than a few seconds without feeling physically ill, so i depend on DU for translations.

k&r
dp

[jmowreader]

20. I believe you're wrong on part of that

We're talking George W. Bush. Come on.

There is no way in hell this man, this champion of businessmen large and small, will demand any employer pay backdated FICA, unemployment or worker's comp payments.

Now, dem damn Messicans, those wetbacks who been livin in the shadows of our Great American Society, that's no problem. They've been here for fifteen or twenty years and have been working for employers who don't document the wages they pay illegals...James Dobson says a combine driver makes $20 per hour, and certainly you've worked 2000 hours per year because no one with a family would ever stoop to taking anything but a full-time job (never mind that nothing that's harvested with a combine can be harvested 12 months out of the year)...gee, what's taxes on $800,000? All due. Right now. With interest. Plus learn to speak English well enough to pass the Defense Language Proficiency Test. And pay a fine? And wait behind "all the people who came to this country legally"? Yes, that sounds like the exact program America's Illegal Immigrant Population has been clamoring for!

The Guest Worker program doesn't sound so hot either--for us. Let us just pretend that an employer really can't find an American who'd take $7 per hour to work as a line cook--in Fayetteville that's the going rate, and there's no shortage of Americans who will do it, but let's say that this hypothetical chef can't find anyone. He signs up for this guest worker program to get a line cook. Now the US government has to pay for the background check Bush is demanding--remember, Bush is the friend of the employer and would never do anything that would cost one more money. Mexico is a large country that hasn't got the money to computerize its governmental recordkeeping systems, nor to standardize its paper systems. (I would be willing to bet money that you wouldn't have to look very hard to find plenty of "criminal records" on Mexicans that are handwritten on blank sheets of paper--preprinted forms are expensive, reams of typing paper not so much.) We've got three choices here. First is to hire Americans who can be trained to decipher the disparate recordkeeping systems used by Mexican criminal-justice agencies; this isn't the best option because you'd first have to find people who speak Mexican Spanish well enough to understand fifty years' worth of evolution of the Mexican criminal code. Second is to pay the Mexican government to investigate these guest workers; now THEY have to find attorneys who understand the Mexican criminal code as it stood in 1956. These people exist. We call them "very senior judges." The third option is to privatize the program, which Bush will do if you let him. Mexico is like any other country: it has honest and dishonest people. Unfortunately for us, the people who flock to Bush are not honest. (Estwing is about to launch its line of Signature Series sledgehammers endorsed by members of the Bush administration. Just perfect for making hand-crushed gravel.) Ol' Jorge Martinez-Castro over there who wants to work in a chicken processing plant? He's got thirty rapes, sixteen murders, four arsons and sixty more rapes on his record--he's a Mel Brooks fan--but Jones Family Farms paid Diaz Records Investigation SA $500 to check him out, so he's just fine. (As opposed to the old days, when Jones Family Farms paid a coyote $500 to bring Jorge up.)

We could go on for months, but this is a bad program. Liberals don't like it. Conservatives don't like it. I have to believe that most of the Bush Administration privately doesn't like it, but you can't tell George that. It won't cut down on the flow of illegals, it won't do anything to the people who hire illegals and it won't do anything about the illegals who are already here. OTOH, it will enrich the private companies who will build the Bush Wall, those who will monitor it, those who will handle the Guest Worker program...

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

23. Ding ! Ding! ! Ding ! We have a winner !!

It is all about privatization. The NG will be there temporarily until the border control program is privatized. How many contracts d'ya think Halliburton will get?

http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/news_releases/012006/01262006.xml

[Ganja Ninja]

16. I don't need to listen to Bush's speech or break it down to know ...

what's going to happen.

The National Guard troops he sends will likely be spread thin and, outside of a couple of ugly incidents where someone gets shot, won't give a fuck about stopping illegals.

Halliburton will get a multi-billion dollar contract to build a token fence that won't stop anybody.

Things like extra border patrol agents and ID cards won't ever really get funded.

Anyone that's determined to cross in from Mexico will find a way and they'll keep coming until we crack down on employers for hiring them.

[Kolesar]

17. Your comparison to the Berlin Wall is way off base, sorry

Further, I cannot understand your point about "never been offered the jobs" in this segment:

* Guest worker program.

This is really the strangest part of the whole program. It shows how utterly clueless the administration really is on this problem. Under this program, a Mexican who's willing to pay for a criminal background check can apply to be a guest worker. As a guest worker he'll be employed at a legal wage with a company that will pay the employer's share of his unemployment and worker's comp payments and withhold his federal and state income taxes and FICA payments. He's going to do this because, according to Mr. Bush, there are jobs Americans won't do.

That sounds great until you understand that the reason Americans won't do these jobs is that, for the most part, they're never offered them. An illegal will work for three or four dollars an hour--good money in parts of Mexico--and you don't have to pay unemployment or worker's comp on them. And if they get injured at work...hey, no problem, you can just fire them even if they weren't at fault.

[cap]

18. it's not strange... it's a gift to business

you can have a segmented tier of the labor force that is underpaid ... that you can pack into dorms or force to live in cars.. Forced, economic segregation of Hispanics who will never become citizens and never have the ability to unionize. Oh yeah... and it helps break the existing unions... like it did the unions in the building trades... there used to be a plasterer's union, a carpenter's union....


Carlyle group has predicted a globalized equalization of wages... this is all part of the plan.

He's able to get the political cover in the bill to appease conservatives because he's going to get tough with immigrants.. Lots of soldiers on the borders....

Wink, wink, nod, nod... Yeah, I'm tough but I'm not going to hurt any business seeking to depress wages.

[Che_Nuevara]

19. I agree -- the two are nothing alike

other than that they are both border protection schemes. You admit it yourself -- the two are for completely different purposes. And your checkpoints are pretty loose. Any beef-up on border security is a new "Berlin Wall"? I'm not saying it's a good idea, I'm just saying it's not at all like 'die Mauer', which ran -through the heart of a city- and prevented people from going to jobs that they legally held. It was also used as an expulsion supporter, as critics of the state were deported to West Berlin and then refused reentry to their homes. I suggest you read up on it -- it's rather more grave than a border security scheme.

By the way, many countries, Germany included, have standardized IDs that must be carried at all times.

[jmowreader]

25. Let's say you WANTED to hire illegals

A lot of people do. Roofers come to mind almost instantly.

Roofing is a "hazardous occupation" for reasons both obvious (people fall off roofs, heat injuries, people injure themselves lifting materials) and not (a common cause of injury among roofers is falling through rotted roof decks). It's also something most people understandably do not want to do themselves.

If I hire American citizens as roofers, I must pay them $12 per hour. I must do a lot of expensive paperwork and pay the employer's share of their payroll taxes. I must pay a very high rate of worker's compensation. And I must charge accordingly.

But if I hire illegals, I can pay them $6 per hour and they'll be happy as hell. There's no withholding. There's no insurance. They work or I fire them. I hire one American to drive my dump truck because if the government sees I'm running a roofing company with "no employees" they'll get suspicious; everyone else can be illegals and no one will be the wiser.

And the most important part? If I put twelve $6/hour illegals on the roof instead of six $12/hour Americans I can roof houses faster for the same direct payroll cost (or, more precisely, for LESS employee cost than Americans because there's no payroll tax); if I put twelve Americans on the roof I can roof as fast as if I had Mexicans up there, but my payroll costs are far higher.

Now that I've established WHY I don't want Americans roofing for me, how would I ensure I don't hire any? There are three ways. The first is to get into the Day Labor market. Take your dump truck to the place where the Day Laborers meet, yell out that you want twelve good roofers, and watch the truck fill up. The second is to put an ad in the paper, "Roofer, $6 per hour, must speak Spanish. Call xxx-xxxx after 5pm." You will NOT find a bilingual American willing to work all day in the broiling sun packing 90-pound bundles of shingles up a ladder for six dollars an hour. The third is to hire an illegal, then ask him if he knows anyone else who's good.

It is perfectly easy to not hire Americans if you don't want to. And plenty of employers do not.

- - - - -

Also, explain why the Berlin Wall comment is off base. I don't think it is. Both of them were intended for population control--in the case of the Berlin Wall, they were trying to keep East Germans in East Germany, while the Bush Wall is intended to keep Mexicans in Mexico. And both are being built because of the demands of outside forces--Honecker built the Berlin Wall because Krushchev told the East German government to fix its defection problem right now; the Bush Wall is being built because the anti-immigration forces in the Republican Party have told Bush they're going to work to keep Republicans home in November if he doesn't fix the Illegal Immigrant problem right now.

There's a big difference between the Berlin Wall situation and the Bush Wall one, and it's not the shoot-to-kill orders the DDR Border Command had. It's the reason people cross the two frontiers. In the case of the Berlin Wall, people left the DDR because, for one reason or another, they didn't want to be communists anymore. Thanks to the laws of West Germany, anyone who crossed into West Germany was given automatic citizenship. As new West German citizens, the former Ossis were covered by all of the West German labor laws. Also consider: thanks to the East German command economy's making it nearly impossible to spend any substantial amount of money on anything, East German people had a LOT of money stashed away. Hundreds of thousands of marks. Plus, in East Germany they issued you a job; if you weren't in university or a stay-at-home mother, you were required to work by law. In West Germany, that wasn't the case--there was always unemployment in West Germany. Would a West German employer risk his neck to try to sneak East Germans out of the country? No. There's no advantage in doing it. Mexico is different; that migration is 98 percent economic. Employers have great economic advantage in using illegal Mexican labor--it's cheap, it's loyal because it has to be and in many cases it's just as good as American labor. The East Germans stopped their defection problem by getting rid of the communists. America doesn't have an easy fix like that.

[warrens]

21. Not one word about penalties for employers

These are the guys who dangle the porterhouse steak in front of the doghouse. Many of them started their business under a plan to employ illegals; others simply moved their businesses from union states to poverty states, attracting illegals. But they're the major problem.

[catmandu57]

29. Instead of militarizing our borders

go after the people who hire illegals. From the big corps to harry with a pickup bed full of day laborers who are going to build a fence reroof his house etc.
Every town/city has someplace or several places day laborers wait for work, park some policia down there and bust a few people and it will stop.
Make the fines and jail time real, very real make it hurt this will stop.
Recently, there was a pork processing plant that opened near here, last month la migra went in and arrested 250 illegals, not a word about the execs who hired them.
We need to go after them too.

[jmowreader]

34. Exactly. Demand drives supply.

Alcohol prohibition didn't work because people liked to drink.

Marijuana prohibition didn't work because people like to take marijuana.

Bush's immigration reform proposal won't work because people like to pay workers less than the going rate.

You want to SOLVE the illegal immigration problem? Start deporting employers.

Fines won't work because they just pass them on to their customers in the form of higher prices.

Prison terms won't work because Club Fed ain't that much of a hardship, especially if they have access to telephones.

I'm talking instant deportation, folks. The government finds out Western Wood Flooring's staff is 92 percent illegal? Send the goon squad in, round up all the illegals and all the company officers, drive them to the airport, put them on a plane, fly them to Villahermosa and THEN let them call their wives. And make them stay gone for five years. None of this "you're free on your own recognizance until your trial comes up, and then we might deport you or we might give you a $500 fine and tell you not to do it again." Deporting enough CEOs to let the rest of them know they're not screwing around will easily solve the problem.

[Lib Grrrrl]

38. Yup.

It's why they started arresting the Johns along with the prostitutes.

The Johns didn't give a shit when it was only the hooker getting arrested. But when they started arresting the Johns...well, prostitution will always be around, but you bet your ass the Johns are a lot more careful nowadays!

[DS1]

27. I already have a US issued biometric ID card

:shrug:

[knitter4democracy]

28. My sober reasoned analysis:

AUGH!!! HE'S A TOTAL MORON, AND WE NEED TO IMPEACH HIM NOW!!! AUGH!!! WHAT'S IT GOING TO TAKE, AMERICA?!?!??!

Sorry, but that's as sober and reasoned as I can make it today. :blush:

[Lib Grrrrl]

30. He Will Never Address The REAL PROBLEMS - Because That Would Hurt His Base

"If he wants to address illegal immigration he's got to go after the source of the problem--tens of thousands of small businesses who don't want to file paperwork or pay $5.15 per hour to their employees."

Exactly...he will never go after those employers, because it would hurt his base.
But, there's another aspect to the problem that Bush won't mention...the corrupt fucking government in Mexico that doesn't give a shit about it's citizens, and does nothing to keep it's citizens there...and everything possible to drive them HERE.

If Mexico actually required it's businesses to pay a decent wage to it's workers, and to provide a clean, safe work environment for it's workers...Mexico's citizens would not be coming north.

Fuck you, Vicente Fox!!!

[primative1]

35. Senate ammendment vote says it alll

Our great democratic leradership has just killed an ammendment that says we will control the borders before we talk amnesty. Whoo- hoo. Thats all this bill they are discussing now says. Democrats again fail to do the right thing. And this is the ONLY alternative to Bush World?

[Heywood J]

39. Illegals are a stopgap in a lot of respects

I mean, they put more money into the hands of a greedy company, but they also reduce costs for the non-greedy. That just keeps people from realizing the true cost of what they want. If you were to pay everyone a living, working wage as we did decades ago, and manufacture products in America, prices would skyrocket.

Using Mexican illegals and Chinese factories pretty much guarantees the costs stay lower and the American public doesn't wake up to the facts that their currency has been devalued several times over, they don't make as much money as they used to (in purchasing power), and that the economy was dumped in the crapper.

I don't think Bush wants to get rid of all the illegals (thus hiking the prices) and alert people to what he and other neocons have done to the economy.

[cap]

40. reduce costs for the non-greedy????

no ... reduce costs for the skin flints... maybe we dont need as much useless stuff at low cost... maybe we need to hire our neighbor's kids when we want low cost temp labor around the house???

[Heywood J]

41. I didn't want to

use the word "honest" for businesses that are hiring illegals.