Immigration Reform
Base10 just missed the President's speech last night, but is catching the cable news saturation coverage today. Base10 has to say that he mostly agrees with the President. Among the more controversial proposals was the President's desire to deploy National Guard troops to the border to engage in support roles until 6,000 more Border Patrol agents can be trained.

Base10 thinks this is a sop to conservatives and will not have any real effect on border security. The real proposals are use of high-tech to improve border security coupled with a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship for the illegals that are here.

Actually, the President should be congratulated for taking a middle path on a very contentious issue. Whether Congress will respond is another matter.

There were mostly negative reviews in National Review, but check out Victor Davis Hanson's comments:

The president's comprehensive proposals include something for everyone:

For the conservative base: tamper-resistant identity cards; the National Guard on the border; employer sanctions; and emphasis on assimilation.

Liberals applaud a sort of earned citizenship without forced deportations; and appreciate Kumbaya rhetoric.

Libertarians and employers get their guest-worker program.

Of course, for those very same reasons no group will be happy. Yet the president mapped out the middle ground that will probably form the parameters of all future debate.

But my own chief worry is that guest-workers will only perpetuate the problem by supplying a continual unassimilated, low-paid, and ultimately volatile underclass. And such a helot program (a cultural and social catastrophe in Europe) is, in fact, antithetical to many of the president's own proposals. Cheap labor will undermine the wages of the very illegal aliens that are granted residence while they apply for citizenship; it will continually provide the fuel for La Raza and Aztlan romance; and keep fresh the tired ethnic sloganeering and tribal activists who hate assimilation and would die on the vine without fresh victims of "exploitation"—while ensuring that Mexico gets its remittances and avoids reform by exporting its unwanted.

Second, there was nothing specific offered to match the rhetoric of assimilation. Why not introduce court-proof, English-only legislation that would return our federal documents to one language? Or at least proposals in our schools to emphasize the melting pot? Or new patriotic citizenship applications that emphasize English and knowledge and appreciation of American culture?

All in all, I think the speech was politically astute in its emphasis on "transition" and the evolving nature of his remedies, and, pace critics, will probably earn the president more supporters than detractors.

Any pundit who can work the word Helot into the political debate deserves to be applauded.
- posted by Base10 @ 12:50 PM