Immediately after his speech, many of Bush’s friends and foes rejected his “middle ground” on immigration.

Rejecting a bill adopted by the House of Representatives that would make felons of all immigrants without papers, the president argued that it was not “realistic” to deport the millions of undocumented. Instead, he advocated taking a “rational middle ground,” and pushed for many elements of a bipartisan immigration bill being debated in the Senate. He also proposed the deployment of up to 6,000 National Guard troops to provide logistical support to the Border Patrol.

The debate in Washington takes place after weeks of street mobilizations by millions of immigrant workers and their supporters across the country to demand legislation regularizing the status of all undocumented workers.

Immigrant rights actions have continued, including a May 17 rally in Washington sponsored by the National Capital Immigration Coalition and other groups. The New York Immigration Coalition called a March for Justice for Immigrants on May 20.

“No guard, no wall will keep us from crossing,” Jorge Gutiérrez, a worker preparing to cross into the United States from the Mexican border city of Juárez, told the Associated Press May 15.

“For Mexicans, there are no obstacles,” another worker, Jesús Rodríguez, told AP in response to the White House proposal.

The immigrant rights demonstrations were precipitated by opposition to the House-approved bill, HR 4437, sponsored by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, which would make it a felony for anyone to be in the United States without proper documents. As protests spread across the country, including mobilizations of 2 million workers on April 9-10 and again on May 1, the senators were unable to come to agreement on a bill before their spring recess. In his May 15 speech, Bush weighed in with his proposals and pressed the Senate to come up with a bill by the end of May.

In order to “secure our borders,” Bush proposed expanding the Border Patrol from 12,000 to 18,000 agents over the next two years, and to deploy up to 6,000 National Guard troops to support the border cops during this period. He insisted that the soldiers would carry out logistical tasks, not arrests, and that the government “is not going to militarize the southern border.”

Other steps to tighten border control would include high-tech fences and surveillance by unmanned drones. The number of beds in immigration jails would be expanded and the deportation process would be expedited, he said.

At the same time, taking issue with supporters of the Sensenbrenner bill, Bush said, “We must face the reality that millions of illegal immigrants are already here.” It is “neither wise nor realistic to round up millions of people, many with deep roots in the United States, and send them across the border.”

Some 12 million undocumented immigrants, mostly from Latin America, live in the United States. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, about 7.2 million of these workers were employed in March 2005, accounting for 5 percent of the workforce. About 40 percent have arrived in the past five years, an inflow nearly five times higher than in the 1980s. Unlike previous decades when they were concentrated mostly in a few large urban centers, including Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Miami, immigrants today live and work in virtually every region of the country. They number 35 million, about 12 percent of the population.

For the millions of undocumented immigrants “who have roots in our country and want to stay,” Bush called for providing a route to gain permanent residency and citizenship. Insisting that his proposal was not an amnesty, he said they should be required to pay a penalty, undergo security checks, learn English, work in a job for a number of years, and “wait in line behind those who played by the rules.”

Reiterating his call for a “guest worker” plan, the president said, “The reality is that there are many people on the other side of our border who will do anything to come to America to work and build a better life.” It is an inflow “that walls and patrols alone will not stop.” He said a guest worker plan “would meet the needs of our economy.”

The dependence of many industries on the labor of undocumented immigrants was underscored by the dozens of packinghouses, garment shops, construction sites, and agricultural operations that shut down when workers across the country skipped work on May 1.

Under the plan Bush proposed, workers outside the United States could apply for a temporary visa if they had a job offer and passed background checks. But they would have to return to their country of origin after several years when their visa expired.

Bush said that all “legal foreign workers” would be issued a “tamper-proof” ID card carrying personal information, such as digital fingerprints, centralized in a federal database allowing verification of their employment eligibility.

The White House proposal is similar to the bill under debate in the Senate. That measure would double the border police to 24,000 over the next five years, establish a guest worker plan, and put in place provisions, subject to onerous fines and other conditions, under which many undocumented immigrants could eventually gain permanent residency.

Presenting the Democrats’ response to Bush’s speech, Sen. Richard Durbin largely agreed with the proposals. “Democrats are willing to support any reasonable plan that will secure our borders, including the deployment of National Guard troops,” he said. But Durbin criticized the administration for not expanding the Border Patrol as much as it had promised.

Democratic senator Patrick Leahy complained that since Bush took office in 2000, border arrests of immigrants had fallen by 31 percent and the number arrested annually inside the country declined to less than 26,000 in Bush’s first term, compared to about 40,000 during William Clinton’s second term.

While Senate majority leader William Frist and other Republicans supported the president’s plan, several House Republicans voiced sharp objections. Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado and others rejected it as an amnesty.

Governors of border states raised concerns about deploying the National Guard. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, a Republican, and Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democrat, objected that Bush’s proposal would overly stretch the Guard. Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, and Republican Rick Perry of Texas welcomed it. Some 400 National Guard troops have been deployed along the border since 1989 to assist with “antidrug policing.”
 
 
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