92 words - Bush's weakest point in the State of the Union

President Bush uttered exactly 92 words about immigration reform in his State of the Union Message tonight. I'm going to dissect them as I see them:

America's immigration system is also outdated...

Yes it is. It reflects 1960's silly guilt over our nurturing an homogeneous culture for most of our days as a nation. What is even more outdated is our enforcement policy. Let's start by enforcing the laws we have today before we go off and re-engineer the system. Mr. President, your "guest worker program" is predicated on having a border control system that works. We haven't proved capable of that in more than 40 years. It also depends on there not being an overwhelming increase in illegal alien incursions as a result of the belief that amnesty awaits anyone who can get here. The debacle of the 1986 amnesty is not ancient history. I suggest you study it.

...unsuited to the needs of our economy...

Jorge, why don't you just say that you want to give your big corporate buddies a guaranteed hedge against wage increases and assurances that we won't deport their nannies?

...and to the values of our country.

Jefferson warned us about the dangers of creating an "heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass." That's what you are attempting to do. You may not believe so, but you have not lived in any place that has been overrun by non-assimilating, culturally arrogant third-worlders. Those of us who have know that the vast majority of those who would "benefit" from being here under your plan have no desire to get in tune with the values of this nation.

We should not be content with laws that punish hardworking people who want only to provide for their families...

I agree. Why do you want to punish hardworking Americans by driving low-skilled-worker wages down by fomenting the largest influx of unskilled opportunists that this nation has ever seen? If you get your wish on this issue, we'll have 40 million third-worlders here overnight. We already have allowed more than 10% of Mexico's population to come here. Are you shooting for 25%?

...and deny businesses willing workers, and invite chaos at our border...

Your plans substitutes willing Americans for willing foreigners and living wages for subsistence wages. You think there's chaos at the border today? What do you expect to occur the instant it appears that your asinine bill will pass?

It is time for an immigration policy that permits temporary guest workers to fill jobs Americans will not take...

There is no such thing. There's a WAGE they cannot accept, but to say that there are jobs that Americans won't do is an insult to our heritage of promoting the protestant work ethic.

...that rejects amnesty..

Here' a clue, Jorge, if the "guest workers" can in any way "earn legalization" it is an amnesty. If they go back to their countries of origin, never to return, it's not. Got it?

...that tells us who is entering and leaving our country, and that closes the border to drug dealers and terrorists...

It's all tied together. Eliminate the demand for drugs and they cease to be a problem. Eliminate the demand for cheap labor by prosecuting employers who hire illegals and our borders become more orderly...which makes it easier to spot the terrorists when they come across.

Fortunately, Bush's immigration proposal seems to be the most divisive of his ideas, especially among Republicans. There's hope that this stupid, stupid, stupid idea will wither on the vine.

John Fund on the Trail
Wall Street Journal, OpinionJournal

"Rush [Limbaugh] has 20 million listeners a week, so if he decides to attack President Bush's plan to regularize immigration flows through a guest-worker program, he could help kill the idea."

Please Rush, get on this one. Post-American America awaits if conservatives don't get over their reluctance to hammer the president on this.