Bush urges sweeping immigration overhaul

By Mike Allen
The Washington Post

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Taking on an issue he shelved after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush proposed a program that would bestow temporary legal status for at least six years on the 8 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, as long as they keep their jobs. But it would not automatically put them on a path to obtaining citizenship or even permanent resident status.

"We must make our immigration laws more rational, and more humane," Bush told 200 Latino supporters at the White House. "I believe we can do so without jeopardizing the livelihoods of American citizens."

Bush said the current immigration system, which has prompted many Mexicans to risk their lives crossing treacherous waters and desert, needs a complete overhaul. It not only shortchanges immigrants, he said, but also hampers U.S. businesses that rely on immigrant labor.

Bush's "temporary worker program" was eagerly embraced by business groups but condemned as stingy and impractical by advocates for immigrants.

Bush is scheduled to meet Monday in Mexico with President Vicente Fox, who has been prodding the White House to make changes in border policy. Bush called his Mexican counterpart yesterday morning.

Fox called the proposal "interesting" and said it would "clearly recognize the worth of the Mexican men and women who are working there in the United States."

But Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Derbez gave a more critical assessment, saying the two nations still need to do a lot of work to improve the proposal.

"We will continue working until we obtain what we really have searched for, which is a total and complete (immigration) program," Derbez said at a news conference.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who is visiting Mexico and other Latin American countries this week, played down hopes that Bush's proposal would pass. "I don't want to exaggerate expectations," he told Mexican lawmakers.

In addition to temporary legal status for undocumented workers now in the country, Bush's program would allow an unlimited number of new immigrants to enter as long as they obtained jobs through a database that would be run by the government and would offer the openings first to U.S. citizens.

Under Bush's plan, foreign workers would be legal for three years and then could renew their status at least once. The White House plans to negotiate the number of renewals with Capitol Hill, but Bush said: "It will have an end." The plan would include financial incentives for temporary workers to return to their home countries.

The temporary workers — administration officials anticipate most would be Mexican — would be given biometrically encoded cards. They would allow the workers to come and go legally to their home countries, a trip now difficult and occasionally dangerous for illegal workers who must sneak back into the United States.

Some members of Congress complained that the plan would have the effect of rewarding people who had broken the law by using phony documents to obtain jobs.

Opponents derided Bush's proposal as an "amnesty," a politically charged term that causes conservatives to recoil. Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., a member of the House subcommittee that would consider the bill, said it "amounts to the forgiveness of a criminal act, no different under the law than printing hundred-dollar bills in your garage."

Bush said in his remarks that he opposes "amnesty, placing undocumented workers on the automatic path to citizenship." The White House said the plan is not an amnesty because it is temporary and does not lead to a green card, or lawful permanent residency.

Bush said that in the future, enforcement would be stepped up against companies that hire illegal workers.

"Law enforcement will face fewer problems with undocumented workers, and will be better able to focus on the true threats to our nation from criminals and terrorists," he said.

Business groups, made up of some of Bush's biggest financial backers, welcomed the plan as a way to create a stable work force and alleviate labor shortages for low-wage and dangerous jobs that Americans disdain in agriculture and the hotel, health, restaurant and construction industries.

"We have a problem with projected job growth and a diminishing work force, and the economy can't expand unless we have workers to fill available jobs," said Randy Johnson of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Labor advocates warned that the president's proposal to have workers sponsored by employers to obtain legal status would prevent them from complaining about job conditions out of fear that the employer would revoke the relationship and have them deported. Other experts cautioned that employers could use the threat of recruiting low-wage, legal immigrants to threaten existing U.S. employees and prevent them from seeking better working conditions.

Advocates for immigrants complained that Bush's proposal does not provide an automatic route for temporary workers to become citizens.

"We're going to be creating, under this type of legislation, a large number of basically indentured servants," said Susan Martin, an immigration expert at Georgetown University.

Information from the Chicago Tribune reporting from Mexico City is included in this report.

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