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Immigration See other Immigration Articles Title: Bush to Detail Guest Worker Plan CRAWFORD, Texas — President Bush is spending two days pushing border security and his guest worker program with speeches in Tucson, Ariz., on Monday and El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday. White House aides say the president will make remarks pledging additional resources and the use of technology to secure the border. While in the area, he will also receive briefings from Customs and Border Protection personnel about the ongoing efforts to plug the holes in border control. Over the past dozen years, Arizona has become a hot spot for illegal entries. The border patrol made only 10 percent of its arrests in Arizona in 1990. By 2000, that figure had risen to 37 percent. When he signed the Homeland Security Department budget last month, Bush said the goal "is to return every single illegal entrant, with no exceptions." The budget contains $2.3 billion to tighten the borders and $3.7 billion to track down illegal immigrants and hold them until they are deported, ending what government officials call the "catch and release" policy. One concept Bush will discuss in his speeches is "interior repatriation," a term that means returning illegal immigrants from Mexico to the interior of their country, rather than returning them just over the other side of the border. The president is expected to say he also wants to lure illegal aliens into registering with the government under a guest worker program that matches people with jobs for three years, then sends them back to their original countries. Arizona Republican Sen. John Kyl, who has sponsored an immigration bill close to the president's plan, said the carrot-and-stick approach is what gets illegals to stop hiding. "The enforcement will be so stringent that any employer who tries to employ them, and [illegals], will be caught. They wouldn't be able to return to this country or even try to apply and get in to this country for a period of 10 years and employers would be severely punished," Kyl told FOX News. But politically, the proposal has been a problem for the president because it looks like amnesty to some conservatives. Some skeptics add that if illegals are placed at the back of the line for jobs while they apply for legal status, they won't have much incentive to register. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, who has been working with Kyl and others on a guest worker plan, said she would prefer to send illegals home and have them apply to enter through proper channels. "Certainly we need to assure that we know who is in this country. I think a guest worker program is good. But I don't think amnesty is good ... it just encourages more people to come in and wait it out," Hutchison said. "We cannot encourage people to come illegally, wait it out and then get into a legal trap. We have to reward people who come in legally. We do need to have certain types of workers from all over the world ... but we have to know who is in this country," Hutchison said. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told FOX News that it would be virtually impossible to send back to their home countries the 10 million to 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. "The cost of identifying all those people and sending them back would be stupendous. It would be billions and billions of dollars," Chertoff said, adding that the guest worker program would presumably siphon off a portion of the illegals who would register with the government, allowing law enforcement to focus its resources on illegals who don't want to follow government guidelines. Meanwhile, Bush is also getting resistance from industries that rely on foreign workers. They say illegals have become a significant part of the economy. About half the nation's nearly 2 million farm workers are illegal immigrants, and they were in such short supply last year that farmers in California had to extend the harvest season and still lost crops. The Downside to Unchecked Crossings Security proponents say that because more than 700,000 illegals entered the country with little deterrence in 2004, primarily through the Southwestern states, Al Qaeda could exploit holes in the 2,000-mile border with Mexico. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., has sponsored legislation requiring that the secretaries of defense and homeland security cooperate on border patrols. The homeland security secretary would also receive expanded powers to combat the influx of illegal immigrants. "Even if they get captured, there's no harm done, because they would be captured, and they would be released, and they can try it again. So that's why it's so important that we do detain those who are captured coming across the border, and those who are detained from countries other than Mexico, the 'OTMs,' as they're called. They would be sent back to their nation of origin, and any nation that doesn't cooperate with us, we would have the right to stop their nationals from entering this country, even on a legal basis," King said. In August, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano declared a state of emergency in order to get federal funds to help handle the influx of illegal immigrants and the crime that followed. At the time, Napolitano announced that the state Department of Public Safety would create a new detail of officers to work with southern Arizona law enforcement agencies to target vehicle theft, a crime often linked to transporting of illegal immigrants. She also designated $1.5 million for four border counties' law enforcement agencies to add dozens more officers to combat other border-related crime. That came before U.S. border patrol agents working the Arizona-Mexico border reported twice as many violent attacks in the 12 months ending in September than a year earlier. The Yuma and Tucson sectors recorded 365 assaults on agents. Nationwide, agents were assaulted 687 times, according to the latest records. All but one of those attacks took place on the border with Mexico. A spokesman for the border patrol told FOX News that the escalating border violence reflects the influence of criminal gangs and the large profits made from smuggling migrants workers into the United States — as much as $2,000 per person. "The reason for the increase is because we have a lot more agents out there. We have 2,400 agents, and we're making it a lot more difficult [to enter]. We're frustrating their efforts because we have a constant presence along the borders," said border agent Jose Garza. Law enforcement officials recently told Congress that Mexican gangs are getting more aggressive in their efforts to smuggle people and drugs, and smugglers are hiring gangs armed with assault rifles and other weapons to protect their trade. FOX News' Wendell Goler, James Rosen and Julie Kirtz contributed to this report.
Poster Comment: Sold out yet again..
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 4.
#4. To: Zipporah (#0)
The Details: "We're going to legalize all the illegals here currently and then we're going to give lip service to future border protection. At whatever point we accumulate millions of fresh illegals, we'll promptly throw our hands in the air, declare the situation hopeless and legalize them too." (insert dubya smirk here)
#5. To: Jhoffa_ (#4)
At whatever point we accumulate millions of fresh illegals, we'll promptly throw our hands in the air, declare the situation hopeless and legalize them too." (insert dubya smirk here) Thanks for the translation.. :P
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