CNN: Bush calls for changes on illegal workers
(Not in article, heard in CNN soundbite)
Rewarding illegal activity with temporary jobs? Pandering for the ethnic vote? Dander is up on both sides of the aisle.
Thoughts?
Well, as much as I despise Bush and his motivations, I think that this could be a good thing for millions of people living in this country. Hopefully these people would then get protections from OSHA, recieve minimum wage and overtime, plus they would pay into medicare and social security. I’m still a little wary considering the source and my knowlege of immigration issues, so I have yet to form a really strong opinion.
If he can avoid alienating (groan) those on the right, it appears to be a pretty crafty move. It may give him a lot of trouble in California and Texas. Now if he could get them voting rights before the election…
I’d hate to be a conservative, because it looks hard for a Conservative to vote for Bush and maintain your ideals. Unless you take an approach of ‘If you oppose Bush ever, you want President Dean and terror attacks’ (aka ‘support Bush or else!’)
Even this seems to be setting up more government junk, doesn’t it?
Yeah right… illegal immigrants will register on this program. While we’re enacting programs that won’t work, let’s ask for a gun registry for felons. :rolleyes:
Ya know, I really don’t know what this is on Bush’s part. This just confuses me to no end.
After 911, we deport anyone who does not dot their “i’s” and cross their “t’s” if they are from a middle eastern country, but now we are stating that it is alright to be illegal if you are registered? That you will have no issues crossing a boarder if you have your temp work permit.
Not to mention that we have a lack of jobs currently for American’s, but now we have to look to other countries for the work force to fill them.
Here in CA, we tried to get something like this going already. We tried to let illegals get CA driver licenses, but it was frowned upon and shot down by the new republican governor and a majority of his supporters. It was one of the major issues of the recall. How is this going to play with Bush’s anti-immigrant supporters?
MrTuffPaws, Bush sure is doing a hell of a job protecting America against terror. I mean, it’s not like any potential middle eastern terrorists wouldn’t come into the country through Mexico or anything. Although, with the program, they’ll register and then they will be exposed.
Brilliant!
It can’t fail!
This could be the tool to drive a wedge between Bush and the teevee idjits, if the Dems have sense enough to use it and can get their voices heard.
while the idea of getting the more conservative vote is sorta weird, considering the composition of the party, I think a wedge should be driven. At the very least, if they stay home, it’s fine. 
Like I said in another thread this is one of the biggest lead trial balloons ever.
Well, the trial balloon was that AFAIKR there was first a grumble on granting Amnesty…
That turned to be just a program….
A program that officially has no relation with getting a green card….
That looks now that it is only a temporary….
That needs to have extensions for it to work in the long run…
That in the current environment, it is unlikely congress will go for it….
But it gives Georgie a chance to say nice words to the Hispanic community.
This Hispanic American says: BS! The program has a big poison pill for anyone who registers if there are no extensions. Classic Dubya: take credit for initiatives that will not be implemented fully.
It was cooked up by Karl Rove. That alone should tell you whether it’s a sincere program or just a ploy for votes.
Of course it’s the latter.
Not really – at least not on this issue. Many conservatives are for open or more open immigration, just as many liberals are on both sides of the issue[sup]1[/sup]. This is one of those things where the parties don’t line up neatly with the traditional Dem/Repub or conservative/liberal splits.
[sup]1[/sup]: On previewing, that came out wrong. It’s not to suggest that any particular liberal is on both sides but that there are liberals generally on both sides.
That’s nothing but reflexive, unthinking anti-Bush claptrap. Bush has long been pro-immigration, going back to his days as Governor of Texas. There was thought of doing something quite similar to this earlier, and Bush took a lot of heat for seeming to break a promise to President Fox of Mexico to work out a deal during his visit there. Unhappily for both sides, Fox’s trip up here when the idea was bandied about occurred during the first week of September, 2001.
Bush pulled of another Clintonesque move of making an idea advocated by the other side of the aisle governmental policy. The aggresive smacking down of unruly dictators is another.
The Democrats really have no counter to these two moves, except promise to capture bin Laden in one month.
This is the sort of brave move that should make people think twice about dismissing Bush as a draconian dunderhead. This administration has ideas. You may not like the ideas. You may despise the dishonest way in which they sell these ideas: or just slip them in under the rug. But you can’t say that there isn’t an agenda there that’s got a lot more depth to it than a much too-caricatured power hunger.
These people may be illegal. But the fact is, they work for American benefit, in America, for a pittance that no American would tolerate, in conditions no American would tolerate, and yet they are accorded nothing but derision and scorn by Americans.
Apos: *These people may be illegal. But the fact is, they work for American benefit, in America, for a pittance that no American would tolerate, in conditions no American would tolerate […] *
This is the part that kind of worries me. Is Bush’s proposal really anything more than a new bracero program? Its chief effect seems to be just to broaden the labor pool at the very bottom of the economy, short-circuiting upward supply-and-demand pressure on these jobs “that no American would tolerate”: pressure that might otherwise force employers to make those jobs a little more tolerable. That’s a boon for the employers who offer such jobs, and it may be somewhat of an improvement for the aliens who now perform those jobs illegally, but is it a good thing for workers in America overall?
(I’ve long wondered if perhaps the US is on a path that may tend to make it in many respects more like an underdeveloped nation than like other industrialized countries. Trends like ever-growing percentages of citizens unable to afford decent healthcare or education, long-term wage stagnation for the working class, diminishing environmental and worker protections, more laissez-faire business policies, rapid growth in income inequality, etc., don’t seem like progress to me.
Now we see the Administration pushing a “temporary labor” program designed to help employers fill jobs that are openly admitted to be “intolerable” to American workers. Sounds to me troublingly like more “ThirdWorldization”.)