President Bush wants Congress to approve an immigration compromise bill that will be supported mainly by Democrats. He’s no longer worried about getting re-elected, so in his pushing for the bill’s passage, Bush has now told millions of voters to get lost. These are the people who have been his most loyal supporters on virtually every other issue.
Yet Bush now condemns them as unwilling to do “what’s right for America” and accuses their allies in Congress of using “empty rhetoric” to misrepresent the bill as a form of amnesty for illegal aliens. Bush appealed for “a chance to fix the problems in a comprehensive way that enforces our border and treats people with decency and respect.”
We don’t see how it is either decent or respectful to label critics of the immigration bill as unpatriotic and intellectually dishonest.
In the most fundamental sense, the debate is not about whether people from foreign countries should be allowed to come here and become American citizens. In a post-9/11 world, the critical debate is about securing our borders; everything else is secondary.
Whatever happens with the immigration bill now being debated in Congress, Bush’s greatest failure has been his consistent refusal to take concrete and credible steps to secure America’s borders, especially the nearly 2,000 miles shared with Mexico.
Bush is quick to take credit for the absence of terrorist attacks in the U.S. since 2001. But the ugly truth is we still don’t know how many terrorists are here and we have no clue where they are. For that matter, nobody knows with any certainty if there are 12 million, 16 million or 20 million illegal aliens in this country.
One thing we do know — because Bush and other amnesty advocates have been telling us for years — is that “we can’t just round them up and send them home.”
For all his heroic leadership in the aftermath of 9/11 and his steadfastness in Iraq, Bush’s most enduring legacy is a border that remains frighteningly porous.
Fighting terrorism and protecting the homeland is the federal government’s most basic responsibility. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security, including its Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agencies, to do the job.
A recent comprehensive study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse affiliated with Syracuse University of more than 800,000 immigration court cases between 2004 and 2006, however, found only 12 involving illegal aliens that the government charged with terrorism. A mere 114 illegals were brought up on “national security” charges during the same period, according to TRAC. Only 31 of these people were actually deported.
That’s 31 down and how many millions to go, Mr. President? Bush’s cheap treatment of his most loyal supporters will be remembered long after the immigration bill dies a well-deserved death in Congress.
