President Bush Plans Wacky Immigration Storyline For May Sweeps

With numerous scandals- domestic spying, the Fitzgerald investigation, CIA nomination troubles- near a boiling point, the President is set to address the nation tonight on the recent immigration (political) crisis. The President is expected to call for thousands of National Guard troops to be positioned at the Mexican border. He may also reiterate his support for a guest-worker program, although I'm sure he'll downplay this. This is a last-ditch effort by the White House to regain support from his base. Right now it is that base that is bringing his approval rating down to the upper 20s (there will always, of course, be the 25% or so who support him through anything... ie. the 30% in the CNN poll who felt Bush did better than Clinton on natural disasters). The base is upset at Bush over many issues- spending, not being 'conservative enough' (!), and immigration. He's focusing on the latter for now. However, in addition to his proposal being half-assed, the President is wasting his time... again.

The government fails to realize that the people screaming the loudest and dragging those numbers down are not the average American who simply want more compassionate policies mixed with some more organized enforcement of the immigration and labor laws. No, the noise is coming from the far-right xenophobes who never will be satisfied until the border is closed forever and the country is rid of immigrants (the brown-skinned ones, specifically). These extremists include people like former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan (who has called for Bush's impeachment for "not doing his duty to protect the states against that [Mexican] invasion") and popular conservative commentator Michelle Malkin (who rants daily on her site about 'Open Borders Bush' and his "amnesty sham"). If the President thinks he can ever appease this base, he is wrong.

Ignoring the obvious fact that this current immigration 'crisis' seemingly came out of nowhere (and in an election year too- gosh!), I think it's safe to say that neither the left nor the right trusts the President to be the one to figure out a solution. I personally feel that throwing another crappy assignment at the National Guard is ridiculous (most of whom were wrongfully sent to Iraq in Bush's war of choice), especially when the President has cut funding to the Border Patrol, the government agency that's actually supposed to handle these matters. In addition, his guest worker plan is an abomination- a sanitized, 21st-century version of slave labor that will do nothing but create a permanent under-class in this country. It is government policy by the corporations for the corporations. His plan also does nothing to address how to respond to the illegal immigrants already here, although the Senate has had some good, and humane, proposals (an earned citizenship plan that would put many on the path to being legalized Americans, depending on their current status) that the President should consider. We need a leader who is willing to find a good balance- respecting the desire of people who wish to immigrant here, but also having strong border control to keep that process organized, and finally creating/enforcing laws that stop the exploitation and abuse of migrant workers for easy profits. That leader will never be George W. Bush, our emperor without any clothes. And so all of this is just another charade.

Finally, I think Greg Saunders has a great take on this, which echoes many of my thoughts-

Heh. The President is going to give a major primetime address on Monday to try to convince the public that, four and a half years after 9/11, he finally cares about illegal immigration. It’s sorta quaint how the White House still thinks the public likes Bush enough to sit through one of his speeches and respects him enough to believe what he’s saying. It’s been a long, long time since he was a speech away from reversing his political fortunes. Too little, too late, Junior.

The big idea that’s apparently important enough to interrupt '24' to tell us about is a plan to deploy whatever National Guard troops the President can scrape together to help secure the border. This might be a good idea if illegal immigration was a sudden crisis, but the immigration “problem” has been brewing for more than thirty years. It’s not like the President can just pretend this snuck up on him. Besides, we already have an agency that patrols the border….they’re the border patrol. If you’re responding to a semi-permanent security situation on the border, you should devote more resources to that agency, not misuse the National Guard again.

Regardless of the merits of the Presidents proposals or their popularity with the public, as someone who’s firmly opposed to this latest bit of pandering, I see very little to worry about. After all, if we learned anything during Hurricane Katrina, it’s that the President’s promises to deploy National Guardsmen are worthless. Just like his pre-hurricane assurances to Louisiana state and local officials, George Bush just wants to give everyone the impression that he’s on top of things, but he doesn’t want to bother with paying attention to a crisis or taking any responsibility whatsoever. The only “crisis” the President is concerned about is the likelihood of Republicans losing the House. So on Monday night, he might give a cute little speech, but we all know it’s not going to mean a damn thing.

Agreed 110%. It's all about the election.

Josh Marshall also decries this "stunt", noting that "perhaps the truth here is that bringing in the military is the only way his advisors can think of to create an illusion of decisiveness and power in his current state of political impotence" and that it's "just a gimmick to help the president get through whatever new bad news is about to pop."

Meanwhile, the President backtracks already... the Guard plan would be temporary, he says.

Also, members of Congress of both parties are not pleased with this planned use of the National Guard. An exception is Majority Leader Bill Frist who supports it, which should be enough to convince people what a bad idea this is.

At least FOX will air 'Prison Break' in its entirety after the speech. If not, I would've been really mad.