Pres. Bush on Immigration

A few days ago a friend of mine asked me "yeah, but what will Pres. Bush do for us Hispanics"??? Her main concerns seemed to focus on her concern for family members of hers that aren't U.S. Citizens and seem to have such poor opportunities ahead of them in life. In particular, she voiced concern that it is too hard and takes too long for a hard-working Hispanic to be able to come to the U.S. to work and to earn their citizenship. And the whole time they are waiting in Mexico, their children grow up with a very low quality of education. The U.S. has always been a pro-immigrant country, founded on immigrants. In an effort to curb out-of-control immigration, especially illegal immigration, measures were put in place to control the flow into the U.S. Today's politicians face a hefty dillemma: fostering good pro-immigration policies in order to both fill the gaps in our economy and also give a helping hand to outsiders that want to work and be a contributing member of our society, and at the same point developing workable structures to fight the problems associated with illegal immigration. Pres. Bush doesn't have all the answers to this problem, no one does. But his historical stance on the issue should earn support from every honest hard working immigrant. Here are a few of his points on the issue, taken from both policies that he has implemented and Congressional measures that he has supported. You can read more about this issue as well as a wide gamut of his agenda here.

* Supports the temporary worker program(even for illegal aliens), but opposes actual amnesty of illegal aliens meaning that while they won't be prosecuted and kicked out of the U.S. if they perform needed labor, they can't just be 'given' the rights of a Citizen either.
* $500M to cut INS application time from 3-5 years to just 6 months. No more insanely long waiting times to enter the U.S.
* Reforms to make INS more "immigrant friendly"; the aim, obviously, is to treat immigrants more humanely.
* Expand the number of worker visas for both farming jobs and high-tech jobs.

Notice that Pres. Bush's policies don't focus on "hand-outs", but rather on streamlining bloated systems and expanding opportunities for the hard-worker to get ahead. The common phrase is "a hand up not a hand out". Many liberals try to earn the "quick vote" by introducing all sorts of "hand out" types of programs, similar to the issue in CA where all illegal immigrants were going to just be "given" legal drivers licenses. That didn't help anyone except the politicians promoting such nonsense. It didn't address the real problem: Archaic bloated INS procedures. Such solutions are shallow and superficial. Pres. Bush's solutions are much longer-reaching and address the real problems with a long-term vision. His solutions also respect the long-standing tradition of 'earning' one's citizenship and do not minimize the struggles of all of the other millions of immigrants who had to EARN their rights. And yet, his measures aim to remember that most immigrants are honest, family-oriented, hard-working people that deserve our respect and our help and that deserve to be treated humanely.