Monday, May 15, 2006

Bush's immigration speech

George Bush unveiled his 5 point plan for dealing with immigration. Now I have many feelings about his 5 point plan, but the one the American people should really focus on is: How much is this going to cost?

1. Strengthen our Borders – the cost for this point alone must be astronomical. He wants to hire 6,000 more employees. If you paid them minimum wage that would still be over 60 million a year (tax payer dollars), for every dollar over minimum add another 12 million a year. Not to mention the cost for these infrared cameras, motion sensors, the cost of building fences, and roads. Then add the additional cost of sending everyone back, not just to Mexico, which would be cheap, but if someone comes from Cuba or Chile or China we’re (the taxpayers) going to have to pay to send them back there. For this proposal alone the cost goes over a billion dollars.

2. Temporary worker program - It’s one thing to say we need new Ids for all workers. Easy to say that we want to set up a system for workers and employers to get together, but who’s paying for it. A new office or upgrades to the currently existing INS offices is going to be required. More employees will most likely need to be hired. A new government agency will have to be set up to help immigrants who wish to work legally here in the U.S. find employers who want to hire them. Essentially a Federal temp agency. And we’ll be paying for it.

3. Employer accountability – In order to hold employers accountable for hiring illegal workers, you need people to investigate the claims. Once again hiring more people or tasking already over tasked law enforcement with that duty. At least this one could possibly pay for itself with the fines we could levy on employers who violate the law. But it would still probably only break even.

4. Illegals here could earn citizenship – Once again, without increasing the number of people in the federal government, nothing is going to change for those illegals who have been here for years. If those who are going the legal route get to go first in line (and that already takes a long time), then I don’t see those who have been living here for 20-30 years illegally trying to become legal citizens when they would have to wait even longer, work even harder and pay a penalty. THEY’RE POOR YOU MORON! If they had money they would enter the U.S. legally!

5. Which I could only understand as NO HABLO ESPANOL! I didn’t hear much on point five except that everyone must try to speak English. I agree with this one and I think GEORGE W. BUSH should be the first who has to pass an English test for citizenship. That would solve all our problems. Once he’s declared not a citizen then we can legally take the Presidency away from him. HOORAYY!!!

I believe we need strong borders. I believe we need to do something about our immigration problem. But this is just too expensive, and wouldn't really solve the problem. At a time when we have a tremendous deficit and owe money to foreign countries do we really want to get deeper in debt. And remember that as the number of Federal employees goes up so does our tax burden. Whatever happened to Republicans being for smaller government. To co-opt the phrase most often used in local elections: "This plan costs to much, does too little."

- j.r.

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