Webloggin » Blah, Blah, Blah – Not Convinced Over Here

I heard and read the President’s speech this evening and I am disappointed.

I object to the term immigration reform because it is a misnomer. President Bush would be more truthful if he simply stated the issue as the reform of political leaders who have sabotaged enforcement of the existing immigration system. This is what we are talking about.

The deployment of the National Guard is silly because they are going to be there to help build walls and supposedly provide help in the surveillance activates in assistance to an understaffed border patrol. This sounds much like window dressing. Is this possibly one of those jobs that American’s don’t want to take?

In any event I think this is a double edged sword. We’ll see if the Guard and Border Control can work together. Something just seems a bit off with this. I am not sure why anyone would want to put the military on a border if the stated plan is “not” to militarize the border.

The one statement where President Bush said “We will continue to work cooperatively to improve security on both sides of the border, to confront common problems like drug trafficking and crime, and to reduce illegal immigration.” is probably the biggest whopper of all. Continue to work cooperatively implies that they have been doing this all along. This may be true but the cooperative goal has never appeared to be in an effort to stem the flow of illegal immigration. Thus it is just a bit disingenuous.

I will make one final point in noting that the President will be out of office before these changes will be fully implemented.

All in all it was a speech designed to placate the center; something the President has been good at in the past. Sadly I must report that I am not in the center on this issue because I just don’t believe the rhetoric will be backed up by enforcement. It sounds to me like all of this is designed to tide the politicians over until after the 2006 elections.

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