Bush: Wrong Again on Immigration

After the Senate, having been back from vacation just two weeks, decided to go on another two-week hiatus following the failure to pass an immigration bill, President Bush came out swinging today blaming the Dem majority leader, Harry Reid, for his "obstructionist" efforts.

But, while I'm hardly the biggest fan in general of Reid, here's why I think Bush is full of it. First, supposedly a lot of leading GOPers are talking behind the scene that they don't WANT to pass an immigration bill right now. They want to have the issue still being discussed going into mid-term elections the first Tuesday in November. They've done this before on gay marriage and other issues, so I'm perfectly willing to believe they're doing it again.

Second, while the House version of the immigration bill is by far the most draconian and unmanageable, the "compromise" version in the Senate was still something of a nightmare. They drafted this nonsense system where the longer someone has broken the immigration laws, the more they stand to benefit. Only the Senate could think that was a workable plan. No GOPer was going to happily sign onto that initiative and any Dem with an IQ over 50 should not have agreed to it either.

Third, Time Magazine covered this debate in some depth in the most recent issue and while they agree everyone is mad at Reid, they agree just blaming it on Reid is not quite that simple. Read it here.

The GOP is, I believe, the biggest bullshit factor here. It's rich GOPers who scream about immigration while they hire all this cheap labor without visas or green cards. Forgive me, but I just don't hear about huge Dem-leaning businesses where 300 or 3,000 employees all happen to share the same Social Security number. So while Arlen Spector can scream and yell that it's to Dems' advantage not to have an immigration bill, I think the opposite is actually more true: no immigration bill that involves sending all aliens back home will not pass, so it is in Republicans best interest NOT to pass a bill that calls for anything less than deportation or lynching.

The problem, however, goes way beyond state, beyond party, and even beyond country. This isn't a new problem. However, frankly, I'm still surprised people want to come to the land of nuts and roses as much as they once did.

Nor is there going to be any magic solution here. The end result will have to infuriate just about everybody on one point or another. But let's face it: no building of a wall is going to stop illegal immigration. And, if you think we're broke now, imagine how broke we'll be trying to round up 11-12 million illegal immigrants and sending them back home.