Bush Speech Sets Vast Showdown Over Immigration

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President Bush’s vows to gain control of the southern border while upholding its immigrant tradition, issued in his address to the nation last night, will be attacked in the coming days both by Democrats and by factions within his own party.

That was signaled even before the president spoke by the minority leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, who accused Mr. Bush of failing to enforce existing immigration laws, a statement directed at law and order Republicans seeking to derail the compromise immigration bill being put before Congress.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Mr. Reid accused Mr. Bush of a “credibility gap.” “For years, this administration has been willing to look the other way as immigration laws go unenforced,” he said. Mr. Bush challenged the charges in his address from the Oval Office. “Since I became President, we have increased funding for border security by 66%,and expanded the Border Patrol from about 9,000 to 12,000 agents.”

But he conceded that the border with Mexico is still porous. “Despite this progress,” Mr. Bush said, “we do not yet have full control of the border, and I am determined to change that. Tonight I am calling on Congress to provide funding for dramatic improvements in manpower and technology at the border.”

The president advanced a series of measures to address illegal immigration, including a temporary worker program, a better system for verifying work eligibility, and tamper-proof identification cards for immigrants.

Mr. Bush also called for the temporary deployment of thousands of National Guardsmen along the southern border until additional Border Patrol capacity could be raised.

In response to the President’s proposal to call in the National Guard to patrol the border, Mr. Reid said that America needed “permanent solutions, not stopgap measures for our border security.”

“We are a nation of laws, and we must enforce our laws. We are also a nation of immigrants, and we must uphold that tradition, which has strengthened our country in so many ways,” Mr. Bush said.

“These are not contradictory goals – America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time. We will fix the problems created by illegal immigration, and we will deliver a system that is secure, orderly, and fair.”

But throughout yesterday Democrats were careful to frame the issue in the one dimension that unites conservatives skeptical of immigration reform: law enforcement.

Senator Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont, cited a recent study which concluded that the number of illegal immigrants apprehended at the border had fallen 31% since Mr. Bush took office, and the number apprehended annually inside the country had declined to 25,901 in Mr. Bush’s first term from about 40,000 during President Clinton’s second.

“Given the vast increases in the number of Border Patrol agents,” Mr. Leahy said, “the decline in enforcement can only be explained by a failure of leadership.”

The Democrats’ tack will raise pressure from the Right upon conciliatory conservatives like Mr. Bush and Senator John McCain, a Republican of Arizona, who hope that compromise legislation will allow illegal immigrants to earn citizenship over time.

“[Reid] just wants to obstruct, in my judgment. He doesn’t want legislation to pass,” one Senate staffer who was not authorized to speak on the record and asked not to be named said. “If it were simply an earned citizenship program, we would have passed it a month ago. He just always wants to obstruct. That’s the way he works.”

However, Senator Cornyn, a Republican of Texas, who does not support the proposed legislation, criticized present policy in terms similar to Mr. Reid’s. “There are 544,000 aliens who have been ordered deported but who have gone underground…National security demands that we know who is living here, especially since 9/11.”

However, Mr. Cornyn has warmed to the idea of deploying the National Guard on the border, at least temporarily. “He’s not necessarily opposed. He’s opposed to sending the regular military down there,” Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mr. Cornyn, said. “He doesn’t want to militarize the border, but having National Guard support the mission of the Border Patrol until the Border Patrol is fully staffed and fully equipped would be a useful operation.”

Mr. Cornyn’s alternative immigration proposal, the Cornyn-Kyl amendment, would also increase the number of legal immigrants permitted into the country annually, but even that issue sharply divides conservatives.

Many, like Mr. Cornyn, support legal immigration, while others, like longtime anti-immigration agitator and former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan, a former Reagan aide, see it as a threat to American culture. In August, Mr. Buchanan will publish a book arguing for a halt to all new immigration.


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