President Bush's Support Helps Senate Immigration Bill

President Bush's support for an immigration reform compromise is seen as helping passage in U.S. Senate.

Monday night, the president sought to assure conservatives and announced he would deploy up to 6,000 National Guard troops along the Southern border. Today the Senate, by a 55-40 vote, rejected a call to follow the House and secure the nation’s borders before tackling rights for millions of illegal aliens.

It's hard to envision how the House and Senate bills can be reconciled:

The Senate bill couples border security and tough enforcement with a guest worker program and measures that would give millions of illegal foreign residents, mostly from Latin America, a chance to become U.S. citizens. Bush's outlined similar goals in his speech.

The House bill, in contrast, concentrates on border security and enforcement and makes illegal presence in the country a felony instead of a civil offense. Millions of people could be deported under the measure, which has drawn huge street protests from Hispanic groups and their supporters.

According to Knight Ridder, the president is gambling that beefing up security at the border will make it easier for conservative Republicans in the House to accept a guest-worker program and a path toward legalization for many illegal immigrants already here. President Bush may lose that gamble.

Earlier news reports emphasized that the President's speech didn't win over House Republicans:

"I have real concerns about moving forward with a guest- worker program or a plan to address those currently in the United States illegally until we have adequately addressed our serious border-security problems," said House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican.

President Bush, the Senate, business leaders and immigrant rights activists are too far ahead of the American public on what to do about the ever increasing flood of illegal aliens.

As I have posted before history has proven that legalization of illegal aliens is a mistake. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 made nearly 4 million illegals eligible for legal residency. That policy was an obvious failure because now there about 12 million "undocumented workers" In the U.S. If these millions of illegal aliens are legalized now, then we should only expect that twenty years from now we will have to consider legalizing 30 million more.

Granting amnesty, or legalizing illegal aliens encourages the violation of our laws, and perpetuates illegal immigration. The message legalization sends is get into the U.S. any way you can, eventually the U.S. will make you legal.