So George W. Bush has come back from his trip to Latin America with a newfound determination to open up the U.S.-Mexican border. Oops, I mean, he wants "comprehensive immigration reform." One big hint about his intentions came clear Tuesday afternoon in M–rida, Mexico, when the American president began his joint remarks alongside Mexican President Felipe Calder–n by telling his counterpart, "Perhaps the biggest single issue concerning your country is the issue of migration."
Note that last word. The more precise term to describe Mexicans leaving Mexico is "emigration," but instead Bush chose the politically correct "migration."
The whole goal of the open-borders crowd - that powerful combination of Republican-leaning businesses, hungry for cheap labor, and Democratic-leaning politicos, hungry for new voters among the multicultural millions - is to soothe away Americans' natural concern about their country ballooning to, say, 500 million people, with maybe a third of them not speaking English.
So while an "immigrant" is someone from a distant place who might not have sympathy for local traditions, a "migrant" is someone who is just moving around a little.
Indeed, Bush has mastered soothing code words. As he also said to Calder–n on Tuesday, "My pledge to you and the people of Mexico is they'll be treated with respect and dignity." And then, in the very next breath, he used the "m" word again: "The best way to do that is to pass a migration law."
It was a remarkable moment: a U.S. president pledging, on foreign soil, to adjust American law in a way favorable to foreigners. In the words of NBC News White House correspondent Kelly O'Donnell, speaking to viewers Tuesday night: "We saw something you don't see very often. And that is President Bush made a promise, directly, to the people of another country, pledging to the Mexican public that he'll do everything possible to work for the passage of what he calls 'comprehensive immigration reform.'"
And what's that, exactly? O'Donnell explained, "For him that means a temporary worker program and also a way for illegals already in the U.S. to get citizenship."
There you have it: A "temporary worker" program, also known as a "guest worker" program, followed, of course, by amnesty - although in the years to come, the right-left open-borders alliance will, no doubt, come up with yet another euphemism, such as, maybe, "migratory permanentization."
But "guest workers" and "amnesty" would be disastrous for America. A guest-worker program would create a second class of citizenship, which is little different from indentured servitude, a practice that was long ago prohibited in the United States.
In fact, revealingly, servitude was abolished by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1865, which also abolished slavery. President Abraham Lincoln put it best when he described free labor as "the just, and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way for all, gives hope to all, and energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all."
The Civil War, of course, was a victory for free labor - and a defeat for the idea of a permanent, no-prospects slave class. But the owners of labor-intensive farms and factories didn't abandon their docile-worker dream; they have been looking for clever new ways to guarantee a semi-slave workforce ever since. Hence the U.S.-Mexican "bracero" (unskilled workers) program in the Southwest, which lasted from 1942 to 1964.
Now, in our time, the "solution" has been lax border and labor-law enforcement. But what's the alternative to the United States becoming more like a Third World country? Well, if the border were closed, employers would have to pay more, or else mechanize those jobs.
But it looks as if employers won't have to worry about raising wages or productivity, because more non-free labor is coming their way. The low-wage bosses have Bush in their pocket - though they have to share him with the Democrats and, of course, the Mexicans.