The Immigration bill

More on the stall on immigration legislation. Apparently, Bush is still blaming Harry Reid for blocking the immigration bill in the Senate.

“Unfortunately, the compromise was blocked by the Senate Democratic minority leader," Bush said, accusing Reid of using a "procedural gimmick" to "single-handedly" block the bill.’

This was of course referring to Harry Reid’s ability to cast all 62 votes that went against cloture. In reality, 62 people voted to stall the bill and continue debate, only one of whom was Harry Reid. Note: there are only 45 Democrats in the Senate. Only 36 people voted to end debate and vote, showing a clear divide among Republicans on what to do on this bill. Half want the guest worker program, allowing immigrants to run into a 11 year process to gain citizenship, assuming they pay a fine, back taxes, learn English, and can prove they’ve been here for five years. The other half, apparently not seeing this is a horribly drawn out process that won’t work at all, feel this is rewarding illegal immigrants.

I would recommend the fine for citizenship. Although this rewards illegal activity, it will bring them into the workforce as a taxpayer, encourage workers to be documented (we should know who lives in our country), and serves the humanitarian cause of helping those in need. This is a long-time Democratic ideal, so I expect their support, but also Republicans who wanted to help out the Iraqi people by ‘liberating’ them apparently share this compassion. We can’t criminalize them for something we didn’t enforce in the past, that’s completely un-American. But we can enforce strong borders now. And to do that, bring our troops home. That includes our troops needlessly stationed in Europe, the Philippines, Cuba, etc. I know this is revolutionary and extreme, but I believe the National Guard should guard the nation. Feel free to comment, I know that last one would get the switchboards lighting up if I had a radio show.