Ruben Navarrette Jr. / Syndicated columnist
Bush's courage on immigration

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DALLAS — At a time when many politicians will say anything to be popular, President Bush deserves a ton of credit for continuing to push a wildly unpopular plan to reform U.S. immigration policy.

Conservatives in the president's own party think the plan goes too far in legalizing illegal immigrants. Liberals insist it doesn't go nearly far enough. And yet Bush keeps going out on the road to defend it.

Last week, Bush was in Albuquerque trying to drum up support for his plan, which he said would "treat people humanely" while benefiting the U.S. economy.

Standing next to a group of homebuilders, Bush repeated a line that outrages many Americans, no doubt because they know it's true.

"People right here behind me are looking for somebody to ... lay roof, lay tile and they can't find workers here," Bush said. "If a builder can't find an American willing to do the job, they ought to have the ability to put somebody on the job who can do the job."

The president's proposal would grant millions of illegal immigrants temporary worker status and allow U.S. employers to bring in additional batches of workers for jobs Americans don't want.

Bush's road trips to states like New Mexico make sense. The president has to continue to build grass-roots support for immigration reform. Yet in an election year, many Republican members of Congress are staying away from the issue.

One exception is Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who is getting a good deal of political mileage from bashing the president's plan as rewarding lawbreakers.

I bet there are plenty of Republicans in Washington who disagree with Tancredo and who support the Bush plan. Some might agree that illegal immigrants take jobs that Americans don't want. Others might recognize in the opposition to legal-izing immigrants the familiar traces of racism that they would just as soon do without. If only they would say so out loud.

John Kerry, the likely Democratic nominee, has also been reluctant to engage voters in a discussion about his immigration counterproposal. That's right. You might not realize it, but Kerry has a plan of his own. After Bush suggested allowing illegal immigrants with jobs to remain in the United States temporarily, Kerry tried to do the president one better by suggesting that immigrants have a chance to stay permanently through "earned legalization."

Not that you would know any of this from following Kerry recently on the stump. Just this week, Kerry was in Sacramento to mark Cesar Chavez Day, a California holiday set aside to honor the late founder of the United Farm Workers Union. This was his chance to talk about immigration, yet, according to a statement posted on the Kerry campaign Web site, he didn't. The omission was no accident. While the UFW has endorsed Kerry, the union has a long and ugly history concerning illegal immigrant workers — the same people that Kerry now wants to make permanent residents.

And Kerry has had other opportunities to engage the immigration issue. The Democrat routinely blasts away at companies that outsource American jobs, but from listening to him and exploring his campaign position papers, it's difficult to figure out if he agrees with Bush that there are jobs in our country that Americans won't do. A candidate has to be awfully good at navigating political mine fields to talk about issues that he wants to talk about without stepping on an issue that he would just as soon ignore.

Americans seem hungry for a real discussion of immigration reform. When Mexican President Vicente Fox recently visited the United States, protesters hit the streets to demand that he do more to strengthen the economy in Mexico so that migrants stay in their own country. Opponents of the Bush plan still make their voices heard by writing to newspapers and calling in to talk-radio shows.

Cable television shows such as CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" and the Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor" engage the subject with regularity. And when Harvard professor Samuel Huntington wrote a book arguing that Hispanic immigrants are threatening American identity, he kicked off a furor that extended way beyond academia.

Oddly enough though, it hasn't seeped into the world of politics, where both parties seem to have decided that raising the issue does more harm than good.

The one exception is President Bush. It speaks well of him. It speaks poorly of everyone else.

Ruben Navarrette's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is rnavarrette@dallasnews.com

Copyright 2004, The Dallas Morning News