Bush on immigration:

President Bush, rebutting lawmakers advocating a law-and-order approach to immigration, said Monday that those who are calling for massive deportation of the estimated 11 million foreigners living illegally in the United States are not being realistic.

“Massive deportation of the people here is not going to work,” Bush said as a Congress divided over immigration returned from a two-week recess. “It’s just not going to work.”

…it is so bizarre to agree with him on something. (Although I know he’s only pandering to the corporations which benefit from cheap migrant labor, but when corporate interests happen to be the voice of logic…creepy.)

But it’s NOT realistic, and it WON’T solve the problem.

I’ll say it again: the issue most people are upset about are that Americans can’t compete with Mexicans for jobs, because the migrant workers aren’t able to organize to demand better wages and are willing to settle for basically nothing. The problem isn’t the desperate people looking for work: it’s corporate exploitation. Target the actual people responsible. Enforce the laws already on the books criminalizing the hiring of illegal workers. That’ll be much more effective in preventing people from coming than just deporting people.

I think no new legislation is even necessary. We already have all the laws we need on the books, don’t we? The problem is they aren’t being enforced because politicians will say one thing and do another (big surprise) — the people they supposedly “represent” demand stricter immigration laws, so they’ll give lip service to it…but the laws we already have aren’t being enforced because the people who fund both major parties prefer it that way.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 1:37 pm and is filed under Immigration, Politics.