Bush touts guest worker program proposal
By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer
Mon Apr 9, 3:11 PM ET



President Bush visited the U.S.-Mexico border Monday to tout a guest worker program for immigrants, pursuing a key domestic policy goal despite chilly relations with Congress.

The trip, a bookend to the visit that Bush made to the same southwest desert city last May, comes as tension rises over a new immigration proposal tied to the White House. Bush's team is privately working hard to rally votes for what Bush calls comprehensive reform — a mix of get-tough security with promises of fair treatment for undocumented residents.

Upon arriving in Yuma, Bush met Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. The two took a quick look at the "Predator," an unmanned plane that border officials use to monitor the region.

Bush pointed to two new layers of fencing that have been erected at the border since he visited the same spot a year ago.

"It's amazing the progress that's been made," Bush told border officials. "I was most impressed by your strategy, but more impressed by the fact that it's now being implemented."

Both Bush and the Democratic-run Congress are eager to show some accomplishment on a core issue like immigration. Yet, it's a sticky subject, and the fault lines don't necessarily fall along party lines. For Bush, opportunities to see through his domestic agenda are shrinking.

With up to 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., lawmakers haven't agreed on how to uphold the law without disrupting lives, eroding the work force and risking political upheaval.

Bush is hopeful for a legislative compromise by August. He was making his case at a point along the Yuma Sector Border, a 125-mile stretch overlapping Arizona and California. Bush hoped to send a message — particularly to conservative critics from his own party — that the stepped-up border enforcement is working.

So far this budget year, apprehensions of people crossing illegally in the Yuma Sector is down 68 percent, according to the White House. Bush credits that to the power of deterrence.

The president's relations with Congress these days have been soured by the war in Iraq. He is at odds with Democratic lawmakers over a bill to extend war funding in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Presidential spokesman Gordon Johndroe said that although war dominates the headlines, "there's a lot of quiet work that goes on underneath the surface, so that we can get some legislation done on issues like immigration."

Administration officials led by Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez have been meeting privately for weeks with Republican senators. That expanded to a meeting in late March with key senators from both parties.

Out of that session, a work-in-progress plan emerged — one described as a draft White House plan by officials in both parties and advocacy groups who got copies of the detailed blueprint.

The White House disputes that characterization. Spokesman Scott Stanzel said it was only a starting point, an emerging consensus of Republican senators and the White House.

Regardless, the floated proposal has already met opposition. Thousands of people marched through Los Angeles on Saturday, spurred in part by what they called a betrayal by Bush.

The plan would grant work visas to undocumented immigrants but require them to return home and pay hefty fines to become legal U.S. residents. They could apply for three-year work visas, dubbed "Z" visas, which would be renewable indefinitely but cost $3,500 each time.

Briefing reporters on Bush's flight to Arizona, Johndroe would not offer the president's position on the "Z" visas.

"There are a lot of proposals floating around out there," Johndroe said. "I don't want to negotiate from here. I'm going to let secretaries Chertoff and Gutierrez do that with members."

The undocumented workers would have legal status with the visas, but to become legal permanent residents with a green card, they'd have to return to their home country, apply at a U.S. embassy or consulate to re-enter legally and pay a $10,000 fine.

That's far more restrictive than the bipartisan bill the Senate approved last year.

So far, Bush has only gotten part of what he wants — border legislation. He signed a bill last October authorizing 700 additional miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The president has spent much of the last four days on vacation at his Texas ranch. He returns to Washington Monday after the Arizona visit.

Dems Face Immigration Hurdle, Too

By: Ben Smith
April 9, 2007 07:46 PM EST


Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has a long answer when it comes to immigration -- "We've gotta do five things simultaneously," she said in Burlington during a swing through Iowa last week. But for Iowa Democrats, there are two big applause lines.

In the down-and-out river town of Waterloo, the crowd cheered Clinton when she promised to crack down on businesses that employ illegal immigrants. But the loudest, quickest applause came for another line: "You're going to have to learn English."

Immigration isn't at the top of any Democratic presidential candidate's agenda, and conventional wisdom holds that navigating the issue is crucial only for Republicans in next January's caucuses.

But a closer look shows that concern about immigration seems to burn almost as brightly for liberal Iowa caucus-goers as it does for the Republicans and conservatives with whom it is traditionally identified. And Democrats are also being forced to address the emotional edge of an issue that has become part of the lives of voters in even the most homogenous parts of the country. Whether any Democrat will attempt to gain an advantage by tapping into these currents within the party, or whether they'll remain unified around proposals to offer illegal immigrants access to citizenship, remains an open question.



"Chicanos from Mexico are a presence in a lot of moderately sized and smaller towns in Iowa and other parts of the Midwest," said Steven Schier, a professor of political science at Carleton College in Minnesota. "That gives it (the immigration issue) an immediacy that it didn't have 10 or 20 years ago."

A University of Iowa poll of 1,290 registered Iowa voters, set to be released this week, found that about 40 percent of Democrats identified immigration as a "very important" issue, with nearly every voter surveyed saying it was either very or somewhat important. About 60 percent of Republicans called the issue "very important."

"It's a surprising number," pollster Dave Redlawsk said of the Democratic total. "The impression out there is that this is more of a Republican issue, and there isn't a Democrat who is running on a hard-core immigration position. But what the poll suggests is that there's broad interest in what's going on with undocumented immigrants."

The poll has another surprise, however. Redlawsk found that a majority of both Iowa's Democrats and Republicans -- given the explicit option in the poll -- would prefer to see what they called "undocumented" immigrants pay fines and learn English but stay in the country. Only about one in five Democrats, and a quarter of Republicans, favored mass deportation.

Iowa would seem an odd choice for a hotbed of immigration anxiety. The home of the crucial first caucus is 92 percent non-Hispanic white, and less than 4 percent Hispanic, according to 2005 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

But groups of undocumented, largely Mexican immigrants are settling around the meat-packing plants that employ them in western Iowa and elsewhere in the state. The issue has intermittently spilled over into the state's politics, as in 2002, when the then-Republican legislature passed, and Democratic governor Tom Vilsack signed, a law restricting the official use of languages other than English. The new governor, Democrat Chet Culver, campaigned on a promise to push for repeal of the English-only law.

The issue, though, remains high on the agenda for many of the Democratic activists who turn up at forums across Iowa to grill candidates for president. Clinton was asked about immigration in two of her three town-hall-style meetings last week. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) took a question on the subject Friday in Algona, according to an aide's transcript. And former North Carolina senator John Edwards was pressed on his views in a United Auto Workers event in Newton last month.

All three candidates -- like politicians of both parties who support the McCain-Kennedy immigration overhaul -- take a similar approach, stressing tough-sounding measures, such as increasing border security and cracking down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants, to balance their support for ultimately giving most illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.


President Bush, speaking Monday in Yuma, Ariz., struck a similar balance between enforcement and tolerance of existing immigrants.

But the political landscape in Iowa may prove particularly tricky for Democrats, given the emotionally charged nature of the debate about the question of language.

The promise by leading Democratic candidates to make English skills a requirement for immigrants to obtain legal status is uncontroversial as a policy, and language skills are already required for naturalization. But while calling for English-only policies may earn roaring applause, the drive in Iowa to make English the state's "official" language was a hard-fought issue, though it was opposed by many Democratic activists in the state, as well as Culver.

Edwards earned an emotional response on March 10 in Newton when, while listing his own criteria for "earning" legalization, he said: "Another one is a little more controversial, but I think they ought to learn to speak English."

Clinton's speech last weekend was also striking for its tough vocabulary, which cast a plan for naturalizing most illegal immigrants -- after they've paid fines -- in the language of national security.

"They're not going back unless they are rounded up and we find out who they are," she said in Burlington of illegal immigrants. "Having lived through 9/11, I want to know who they are. We need to register them, and if they are criminals, we need to deport them," she said, before going on to say "a lot of these people who have been here for years" should get "some kind of legal form."

But Democrats have to fear a push back. As the University of Iowa poll suggested, Iowans' focus on the immigration issue isn't matched by a clear fervor for the hardest line of mass deportation, a dynamic candidates must bear in mind.

Sandy Kemp, a retired gym teacher who questioned Clinton on the issue in Waterloo, said she was satisfied with the senator's answer.

Kemp said she and other Iowans are responding to Clinton's evocation of her own childhood in the '50s, an emotion Kemp described as, "Let's keep America the way it was -- including legal immigrants."

A retired auto worker, Dwight Green, who asked Clinton about immigration in Burlington, however, said he was dissatisfied with the candidate's answer.

"Our Medicare is out of money because of all of the illegals," he said.

He acknowledged, however, that there's virtually no choice for Democrats on the issue of immigration. Green said he won't support Clinton for another, related reason: her husband's North American Free Trade Agreement. He said he was leaning toward supporting Edwards.