you can't be a rubber stamp for 7 years and then act independent on immigration when the war goes bad...
Immigration has become the neocon battle-cry...a way to appear "independent" after 6+ years of walking in lock step and being a rubber stamp. It's not like this is some new stance by the president. Before the 2000 election, then candidate Bush said this....
From a Speech in Washington, D.C. Jun 26, 2000...
Latinos come to the US to seek the same dreams that have inspired millions of others: they want a better life for their children. Family values do not stop at the Rio Grande. Latinos enrich our country with faith in God, a strong ethic of work, community & responsibility. We can all learn from the strength, solidarity, & values of Latinos. Immigration is not a problem to be solved, it is the sign of a successful nation. New Americans are to be welcomed as neighbors and not to be feared as strangers.
And on dec 9th of 1999, the candidate said this...
I believe it is far more compassionate to turn away people at the border than to attempt to find and arrest them once they are living in our country illegally.
And before the people re-elected him again in 2004, his stance had not changed...from january 2004...
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush will outline an immigration reform proposal Wednesday that would allow workers in the United States illegally to join a new temporary worker program and not lose their jobs, administration officials said.
And ya'll re-elected him anyway. it's not like bush sprung this on everyone after the 2004 election. He's had the same stance since he was a candidate. People seem to forget that this is a family thing for him, and the party was onboard when it was sold as a way to get votes from those pesky ol' democrats....from Time Magazine in 2000...
Monday, Jun. 19, 2000 By JAMES CARNEY AND JOHN F. DICKERSON/WASHINGTON
George Bush--all three generations of him--wants to woo Hispanic voters. Scarcely a week goes by when the Texas Governor--George W.--isn't hola-ing and comos estas-ing his way through a Hispanic community center or a classroom filled with Hispanic children. And late last week in New York City, his campaign released its first television ads of the general election--ads starring GEORGE P. BUSH, the candidate's charismatic 23-year-old Mexican-American nephew, in a direct pitch to New York's Puerto Rican voting bloc. The star turn will not be his last. "You're going to be seeing a lot more of him," beams a campaign adviser.
Even George H.W. Bush--the patriarch of the namesakes--is getting into the swing of things. Sources tell TIME that the former President, who once famously referred to his Mexican-American grandchildren, including George P., as "the little brown ones," recently urged his son's campaign to hold a national Hispanic event aimed at luring Hispanics away from the Democrats.
The big and convenient outcry from the right never happened until Bush was safely innaugurated in January of 2005. There may have been a few blurbs, but nothing substantial. Then, as the war got worse and became it became impossible to sanely defend at least the managememnt of the war, the neoconservative spin machine set it's sights on immigration as a way to appear independent after a full term of rubber stamping the President's policy proposals in the name of "anything that is republican is good, anything that is democrat is bad."
And meanwhile, the real criminals in all this, the companies that hire the workers looking for a better life (as everyone does) continue to be virtually ignored in all this. In fact , we've ignored all the employer related laws on the books since 1986 that were designed to and would have stopped this problem a long time ago. But that would require actually doing something against the companies and people that run these felonious operations. The same people that increasingly fund our political campaigns for election and re-election increasingly each election cycle. Is it a coincidence that those campaign funders get off scot-free and continue to operate their enterprises built on easily abused labor? Is it a coincidence that the only group singled out for ostracization are the misdemeanor committing immigrants who can't really fight back against such words and actions without coming off in a bad light?
Is it a coincindence? I can't say for sure. But I do know the following....
Dry up the jobs, take away the incentive. Problem solved.