Bush’s immigration language: LA Times Op-Ed

The LA Times ran an op-ed yesterday criticizing the President’s efforts in the immigration area.  The Editors write:

“Watching Bush talk about immigration is like watching an old athlete who never fulfilled his promise. He has been saying the right things on immigration since he took office but has never followed through, for various reasons: 9/11, the war, other political imperatives and the need to nurse his political capital. Now he has almost no political capital, which might account for his timid approach . . . .”

“As Bush said: ‘People in this debate must recognize that we will not be able to effectively enforce our immigration laws until we create a temporary-worker program.’  Trouble is, print out Bush’s speech and you’ll see that he said this on the seventh of eight pages.”

In short, while Bush still pays lip-service to his earlier guest worker idea, his rhetoric skews very heavily toward casting immigration solely as a security and anti-terrorist measure.  For 4 long years, it has been clear that this is the few vocabularies with which the president feels fluent….the editorial implies….for I would not suggest such a thing myself, of course.

-just another blogger