Like most of you, I saw Bush's
speech today. And in true Cobra Commander fashion, he manipulated the speech to fit his own version of the world.
Surprisingly, he took questions. Not surprisingly, he looked completely lost.
But one section of the Q&A caught my ear:
Anyway, step one, focus on enforcing border; when we find people, send them home, so that the work of our Border Patrol is productive work.
Secondly, it seems like to me that part of having a border security program is to say to people who are hiring people here illegally, we're going to hold you to account. The problem is our employers don't know whether they're hiring people illegally because there's a whole forgery industry around people being smuggled into the United States. There's a smuggling industry and a forgery industry. And it's hard to ask our employers, the onion guy out there, whether or not he's got -- whether or not the documents that he's being shown that look real are real.
And so here's a better proposal than what we're doing today, which is to say, if you're going to come to do a job an American won't do, you ought to be given a foolproof card that says you can come for a limited period of time and do work in a job an American won't do. That's border security because it means that people will be willing to come in legally with a card to do work on a limited basis, and then go home. And so the agents won't be chasing people being smuggled in 18-wheelers or across the Arizona desert. They'll be able to focus on drugs and terrorists and guns.
The fundamental question that he is referring to is, what do we do about -- there's two questions -- one, should we have amnesty? And the answer, in my judgment, is, no, we shouldn't have amnesty. In my judgment, granting amnesty, automatic citizenship -- that's what amnesty means -- would cause another 11 million people, or however many are here, to come in the hopes of becoming a United States citizen. We shouldn't have amnesty. We ought to have a program that says, you get in line like everybody else gets in line; and that if the Congress feels like there needs to be higher quotas on certain nationalities, raise the quotas. But don't let people get in front of the line for somebody who has been playing by the rules. (Applause.)
Well, I'm a driver and an employee at UMCP. My work ID and my driver's license are pretty hard to forge (although I know it does happen). How difficult is it create documents that are as hard to forge as a driver's license, or even a five-dollar bill? And BTW, I'm glad Bush finally acknowlegdes that people smuggle things into this country.
Of course, you'd think with all that illegal spying he's been doing, he'd be able to give us more information. In fact, if I was a unpopular president who admitted to using warrantless wiretapping, I would be talking about how we caught smugglers with the program, not trying to rename the whole thing to make it sound more acceptable. But none of this really matters because Bush's thoughts on immigration is like a leaf in the wind.
Also, I know Bush doesn't read on a regular, but his comments on "amnesty" were horrid. By his definition, it's "automatic citizenship." His evaluation? "We shouldn't have it." Amnesty is "a general pardon granted by a government, especially for political offenses." Sounds to me like "amnesty" is reserved for things like screwing up relief efforts for a natural disaster. Or completely mismanaging a war and then not listening to your better judgement. Or doing as much as a paperweight while prisoners are being tortured. If I'm wrong, please correct me.
If not, can someone get this guy a dictionary?