Bush’s statements on immigration

This morning, President Bush gave a press conference, in which he addressed a variety of issues from Iraq to Scooter Libby.  Here are his statements on immigration:

Secondly, an interesting opportunity [to work with the Democratic leadership in Congress] is immigration. As you know, Istrongly believe that we need to enforce our borders and that _ andhave taken steps to do so.

But I also believe that, in order toenforce the borders, we need a temporary worker program so that peopledon’t try to sneak in the country to work; that they can come in in anorderly fashion and take the pressure off the Border Patrol agents thatwe’ve got out there, so that the Border Patrol agents don’t focus onworkers that are doing jobs Americans aren’t doing, but are focusing onterrorists and criminal elements, gunrunners, to keep the country _both our countries safe _ Mexico and the United States safe.

I also know that we need to deal with the people who are here _ the 12 million people who are here illegally.

Ihave said multiple times that we can’t kick them out of our country.That doesn’t make any sense to me to try to do that, and I don’t think_ maybe some feel that way, but I don’t feel that way.

But I alsodon’t believe we should give them automatic amnesty _ automaticcitizenship, which I view as amnesty. And we look forward to workingwith Democrats and Republicans to have a comprehensive immigration plan.

The text of the full press conference is available here.

-jmc