President Bush wants to open the floodgates to illegal immigration. After 9/11, you think he'd be more cautious. I interpret his motives thusly: Ensure a cheap labor supply for American business and court the Hispanic vote for the presidential election later this year. Bush is putting America's national security and economic health at risk. The U.S. needs legal and sustainable immigration, not an illegal tidal wave.

In a speech at the White House today, Bush said our current immigration laws aren't working, claiming illegal immigrants are being exploited. Under his plan, illegal workers would have to register and purchase a guest visa valid for 3 years, which is renewable. Such visas would also be made available to workers in foreign countries who have job offers in the U.S. The President claimed that his program would make the U.S. safer since the illegals will be tracked under the plan. He also insisted that the new program would help employers staff their companies. Another plan provision offers retirement benefits to the foreign workers, which Bush claimed would give them incentive to return home when their visas expire.

Bush's words sound good:

Out of common sense and fairness, our laws should allow willing workers to enter our country and fill jobs that Americans are not filling. As a nation that values immigrants and depends on immigrants, we should have immigration laws that work and make us proud. Yet today we do not. Instead we see many employers turning to the illegal labor market. We see millions of hard-working men and women condemned to fear and insecurity in a massive undocumented economy. Illegal entry across our borders makes more difficult the urgent task of securing the homeland.

I'm generally supportive of Bush, but I don't buy any of this stuff. The President's new plan is basically an amnesty that rewards people who have illegally entered the U.S. According to Mark Krikorian, the Center for Immigration Studies' executive director, the plan is

...not what the folks on the left want, which is a quick green card, but it is an amnesty nonetheless. It legalizes illegal immigrants and is going to increase the number of green cards so that people will be able to move through the system faster.

The U.S. currently has between 8 and 10 million illegal immigrants. Should we be making it easier for them to be here? And if they become citizens, won't they be able to get their family members into the U.S.? Can America absorb all the world's people seeking new opportunities? I'm not anti-immigrant. All my ancestors were immigrants to the U.S. But they all came here legally through Ellis Island. What happened to the rule of law?

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR):

THE TRUTH is that there are an estimated 8-11 million illegal aliens in the United States, and it only took 19 to perpetrate the attacks of September 11. Our immigration system has become overburdened and unmanageable due to mass illegal immigration. As a result, there is little reason to feel confident that, absent a massive infusion of new resources, which is highly unlikely given current fiscal realities, anything approaching thorough background checks can be conducted on applicants for a guestworker program. Even without the added burden of an amnesty, people like Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who masterminded the first World Trade Center bombing, and Mohammed Atta, the leader of the September 11 attacks, managed to slip through the screening process. There is every reason to believe that adding new responsibilities to an overtaxed system will make us less safe.

No one has yet explained how the millions of applicants would be given security checks or whether that’s even remotely feasible, given an already overburdened immigration enforcement system. Immigration officials would have to deal with hundreds of thousands of more applicants a year, to say nothing of how we would verify eligibility for any of the eight million potential applicants already here illegally, particularly with many of them armed with false identity documents. When the immigration system can’t adequately perform its most essential mission, adding in the responsibility for security checks, tracking, and removal when necessary for millions of participants in a guestworker program will guarantee disaster.

FAIR asks tough questions that I doubt the Bush Administration could answer coherently. I've got some more questions. Why hasn't Bush appointed a competent head of the INS? Why haven't we sealed our land and sea borders to only legal immigrants/visitors? Why don't we have a comprehensive software system to track all visitors to the U.S.? Why aren't we deporting visitors who commit crimes and/or overstay their visas? If Americans are unwilling to work certain jobs, don't we need to rethink some priorities?

At a time in which we are at war with terrorists, do we want to open the floodgates? I urge all concerned readers to get informed about illegal immigration by checking out the FAIR website and by reading Michelle Malkin's book, Invasion. I also encourage readers to make their thoughts and feelings known to the president, their senators, and House representative by clicking on the following link: