Immigration Last Night

In principle, I respect what President Bush did last night. He really did attempt to reach a compromise and try to build the county instead of divide it.

But there are some pesky details. First, I am all for securing our border and would say that it seems like a pretty important duty of our government. But unmanned drones and 6,000 troops? That seems like a bit of an overkill to me.

Second, he said he wanted to reduce the need for illegal immigration and proposed a temporary worker program. This doesn't reduce the need, unfortunately. Billions of dollars in aid to Mexico might help. But a temporary worker program doesn't reduce the desire of a mother to give birth in the US or of a family to attempt to live here longer than a growing season.

Third, any citizen should be wary of a federal ID card. If it starts with foreigners, US citizens may be next. And the digital fingerprint is worrisome, too. Fingerprinting has a very bad connotation in other countries and asking their citizens to be fingerprinted upon entry is insulting to the point that they probably just won't come.

Which gets me to my fourth concern, that allowances don't seem to be made for anyone other than apple pickers. Thomas Friedman, Bill Gates, and lots of other smart people will tell you that we are desperately short in the US on engineers and techies. We can't import them anymore and a lot of them leave here for India.

Finally, I don't think that Bush is going to be allowed to make this compromise. The Democrats have gotten too strong to cave and the Republicans don't like that with a majority in both houses they have to compromise. He's lost a portion of his base and hasn't gained any ground in the process.