Hearth & Home

President Bush has been evolving, bit by agonizing bit, over the past six weeks on the intractable bugaboo of immigration reform. Or at least that's the way it seems.

Six weeks ago he was demanding immediate action from the border-enforcement-oriented House on the Senate's border-erasure bill:

Beginning a public relations offensive intended to prod divided Congressional Republicans into overhauling the nation's immigration laws, President Bush rebuked conservative opponents of his plan on Thursday and warned that there is "no excuse" for delay.

With Congress set to return to Washington on Monday after a one-week recess, some Republicans have suggested they may fare better at the polls in November if the House and Senate wait until after Election Day to reconcile their vastly different immigration bills.

But Mr. Bush made clear in a speech at the United States Chamber of Commerce that he did not want Congress to wait. Next week, the President will take his case for what he calls "comprehensive immigration reform" on the road, with appearances in New Mexico and Nebraska.

But even then, unable to overcome the angry demands of two thirds of the American people to stop ducking immigration enforcement and stop competing with the Democrats in pandering to illegals, he was starting to backpedal:

President Bush told the nation's most prominent business group yesterday that "unscrupulous" employers have contributed to the illegal immigration crisis in the United States by knowingly hiring undocumented workers, and called for steep new penalties on those exploiting the shadow economy....

"Businesses that knowingly employ illegal workers undermine this law and undermine the spirit of America," the President said during a speech against a backdrop of U.S. flags, images of the Statue of Liberty and the slogan "Comprehensive Immigration Reform." "And we're not going to tolerate it in this country." Although most businesses abide by the law, he said, "there are some unscrupulous folks who want to take advantage of low-cost labor."

He'd have helped himself with this speech if he'd spiked the "COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM" banner that backgrounded him. He hasn't used a PR prop that unsubtle since the "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner when he landed on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln at the end of the invasion of Iraq. As it was, it just made his rebukes to the "businesses" to whom he's been pandering with his guest-worker snakeoil sound patently phony.

Appearing to realize this, Bush's rhetoric retreated further a few days later:

President Bush tried on Tuesday to win back the trust of conservatives who have distanced themselves from him on immigration, promising to "get this border enforced" and warning those who enter the country illegally that "if you get caught, you get sent home."

After weeks of embracing "comprehensive immigration reform" — Washington shorthand for a Senate bill that includes a temporary guest-worker program and a promise of citizenship for some illegal immigrants — Mr. Bush shifted his tone in remarks at the Border Patrol training academy here. Having nudged the Senate into action, Mr. Bush is turning his attention to the House, where Republicans deride the Senate plan as amnesty and are balking at the idea of compromise.

After watching Border Patrol trainees conduct mock security stops under a blistering 100-degree sun, Mr. Bush told the agents "I want the country to pay attention to what you're doing."

He promised to add 6,000 agents by 2008 — bringing the total to 18,000 — to build high-tech fences and new patrol roads, and "to end 'catch and release' once and for all on the southern border of the United States," a reference to the practice of releasing those who enter illegally and are not immediately sent home.

Better, but still handicapped by the lack of any real credibility backing up his words. Dubya has spent his entire political career as an apostle of open borders. Can he really expect anybody to believe that he's seen the light on border enforcement instead of recognizing this bait & switch tactic for what it is? Besides, twenty years ago proponents of the Simpson-Mazzoli bill (the last "enforcement first" amnesty scheme that didn't enforce and did amnestize) lubricated their legislation with the same reassurances, and GDub's rhetoric sounds like it could have been lifted almost verbatim from that debate.

Jim Pinkerton, for one, wasn't buying it:

If for nothing else, we can give the President credit for sticking with his core beliefs; he truly believes that businesslike harmony would be boosted by the free flow of people across national frontiers. Indeed, those pro-globalist beliefs are so strong that they undercut even his photo-op attempts to look tough on border security while Congress debates his legislation. Yesterday the Washington Post reported that Bush, in New Mexico and Texas for a tour of the borderlands, was happy-talking with the locals - in Spanish.

The message sent by such non-English chit-chatting, of course, is that all this enforcement is just a ruse to mollify the right. When things calm down again, Bush believes, amnesty will be granted, and America will continue its long march toward pro-business bilingualism.

Then JP dropped the other eight-hundred-pound shoe:

That's the Bush vision. And yet, four recent incidents have undercut that vision. The first two incidents were the alleged terror plots uncovered last week in England and Canada. The details will be sorted out in the courts, but it would appear, at absolute minimum, that dozens of young Muslim men fantasized about violent attacks on their host countries - even, apparently, beheading the prime minister of Canada....

[I]f we are confronting a clash of civilizations [and we are], then it's foolish, even suicidal, for the United States to be lax on homeland security. In March, the Denver Post reported that hundreds of those apprehended at the U.S.-Mexican border have been nationals of such worrisome countries as Iran and Saudi Arabia. And, of course, the rule of thumb in the current border chaos is that for each person caught, two have slipped through.

Soon enough, the palpable danger of terrorism, imported into the United States, will force Washington to do the right thing on border control. And at the same time, we will have to answer basic questions about who should, and who should not, live in this country.

Bush's cognitive dissonance as an anti-terror warrior on one hand and a border-eraser on the other has never made sense to me. Given his Administration's pathetic immigration enforcement record, it's a wonder that fundamental contradiction hasn't been highlighted in a flash and a roar. But House Pachyderms are connecting those dots in their promised series of hearings on the issue around the country:

With their party sharply divided on immigration, House Republicans this week launched an effort to transform this political liability into an asset by tying it to the war against terrorism. The House GOP's summer of hearings on the emotional issue opened on the Mexican border by portraying the Senate-passed immigration bill as inhibiting local law enforcement officers from preventing terrorist attacks.

Representative Edward R. Royce's International Relations subcommittee on terrorism started hearings Wednesday in San Diego and Friday in Laredo, Texas, on a "terrorist loophole" in the Senate measure. The subcommittee's testimony contends that a provision in the bill prohibiting local police officers from arresting illegal aliens for civil offenses deprives them of a law enforcement tool that might avert future terrorist assaults.

That terrorist loophole - snuck into the "hurriedly passed" bill by pro-immigration lawyers and "Ted Kennedy's staff" (oh, joy) - was dug out by objective analysts, and is quite an eye-opener:

In a Heritage Foundation paper published one day before the Senate bill passed, Kobach publicly exposed what he called the terrorist loophole. Section 240d would restrict local police from arresting aliens for civil violations, limiting them to apprehension for criminal offenses. That means a sheriff's officer on the border could not arrest someone whose papers showed he had overstayed his visa. "Afraid of arresting the wrong type of illegal alien - and getting sued as a result - many police departments will stop helping the federal government altogether," Kobach wrote.

Kobach and Royce point to the fact that four of the 9-11 terrorists, all of whom had violated immigration laws, were stopped for speeding before their attack. Had the police officers asked the right questions, terrorists could have been arrested under current law - but not under the Senate bill. To Kobach, the "results would be disastrous." [emphases added]

The politics of this issue are already crystal clear. The American public overwhelmingly favors enforcement of existing immigration laws and adamantly opposes any further amnesties. The President and the "bipartisan" Senate majority, arrayed against those clearly and forcefully expressed wishes, tried to steamroll through their "comprehensive bill" before anybody outside their clique could have a chance to read it. House GOPers, not being eager to commit political suicide, resisted, provided the time for independent review, and look what they've found already.

There's an old saying: "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." No matter what the psychopathic fantasies of the extreme Left, George W. Bush is not good at fooling people, and he's not convincing anybody that another "grand compromise" would be honored by the open borders crowd, or would be good for the country even if it was.

Dubya has "gone realist" in pretty much the rest of his foreign policy; why can't he see the handwriting on the wall here? Does it need to be in Spanish?