2007-03-16

Bush Tips His Hand

It was an embarrassing swing through points south. President Bush was on the road in Latin America hoping that by repeatedly reminding audiences how much money we give them, he could get the 300 million souls in South and Central America to stop hating us.

Unless gratitude in South America is expressed by rioting in the streets and burning American flags, Bush didn’t buy many converts. In Guatemala, he was insulted by “Mayan activists” and scolded by a Mr. Berger, who runs the show down there—the part of the show, anyway, that hasn’t run here, yet.

News reports said that the rioters wanted to show their outrage at the way the U.S. treats Guatemalans. The president assured Mr. Berger that Americans are really really nice. “Just look at all the money we give you,” he said, giving Mr. Berger a friendly pat on the head. He waved at the crowds through the smoke from himself burning in effigy and flew off to Mexico.

In Mexico, it was tighter security and smaller, more distant gratitude riots. The president soon found common ground with Vicente Fox’ successor, Felipe Calderon. The two countries need to reach an “agreement” on “migration,” the two agreed.

Same old comprehensive amnesty

He’s taken to calling it comprehensive immigration reform, but the plan he’s pushing in Washington is stillan amnesty, of course, and every politician in Washington knows it.

In Mexico, our president said:

“My pledge to you and your government—but more importantly, the people of Mexico— is that I’ll work as hard as I possibly can to pass comprehensive immigration reform.”

George W. Bush promised us he would faithfully execute our laws. He has manifestly broken faith with us. Far from executing the law, he pushes to reward millions of foreign nationals who have broken our laws—the opposite of enforcing them. He rewards them with the gift of citizenship, with becoming one of us. It’s not even his to give, but Bush gives it away as a reward for breaking our laws. He hands it out by the millions to people about whom we know nothing except that they broke our laws, and in return will gain an equal hand in determining those laws.

Bush’s comprehensive amnesty undermines the rule of law itself, while ensuring greater surges of lawbreaking to come. He deepens this betrayal by hiding it behind euphemisms—lawyerly lies. Despicably, he capitalizes on the trust Americans instinctively place in the president as the embodiment of our democracy. He sells our trust for nothing more than the cheap labor that will make a few rich people richer.

But now this. The president of the United States, on a state visit to Mexico, dares offer this odious betrayal of our people as a pledge to the people of Mexico!

This has to be unprecedented.

Dismiss Recent Raids

In answer to a reporter’s question in Mexico, Bush attempted to explain why there hasn’t been a comprehensive amnesty after years of trying. In the United States, he said (and I’m paraphrasing), Americans were feeling like our laws weren’t being enforced. But I think that, over the last year or so, he said, that perception has been changing.

So there you have it. The raids you’ve been hearing about here and there lately are window-dressing. If the administration can make the public feel something is finally being done about illegal immigration, there will be less resistance to an amnesty.

Don’t be fooled. The stepped up enforcement would end the day a comprensive amnesty bill reached the president’s desk. There would be no enforcement, again, for the same reason there was no enforcement two years ago. This administration doesn’t want it, and no one in that White House has suddenly gotten religion.

(With this bunch in power, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the raids in Massachusetts were designed to re enforce the first half of the president’s favorite false dichotomy—stated several times in Mexico—that there are only two options on illegal immigration: the unworkable extreme of mass deportations and earned regularization.)

U.S. media: Calderon a “business-friendly conservative”

President Calderon did his part, too, in the effort to find a way for the two countries to “work together” to end Mexico’s second largest source of revenue: the illegal immigration problem in the United States..

An “agreement” would have us offering amnesty to his countrymen (and relatives, apparently) who are in the United States illegally.

“It’s going to be a very long time before Mexicans stop going north, President Calderon said.

In return for a comprehensive amnesty, President Calderone would improve Mexico’s economy so Mexicans will stay there. Fix Mexico! Why didn’t Fox think of that! With Mexico getting fixed, a lot of the pressure off in the United States and help Bush push his amnesty through Congress.

President Calderone even has a plan all worked out to accomplish Mexico’s end of the amnesty agreement.

Americans pay for it!

We would send enough money to rebuild Mexico. It would go into a NAFTA border bank that the U.S. and Mexico jointly control. When Mexico has shiny new highways just like we have, that will keep the young Mexicans home, see?

But, just in case they still want to go north, President Calderone proposed, and President Bush endorsed, several new border-crossing bridges and highways to help move people and goods across the border “faster.”

Mexico’s offer

If we can reach an agreement with Mexico on enforcement of our laws, Americans will get an amnesty and all the disaster that comes with it. We’ll be charged to administer the amnesty, and we’ll pay for Mexico’s end of the “agreement” as well. While we’re building their country for them down there, we’ll be paying for their maternity bills and educating their children up here.

And on top of it all, as if in deliberate mockery of our weakness and stupidity and “niceness,” we’ll build new bridges—and the highways to them—to make it even easier for more of them to come faster.

Tags:   Bush · Calderon · Guatemala · mexico · NAFTANo Comments