Posted by
Mantic on Friday, June 01, 2007 11:28:25 PM
Illegal immigration is a real problem. It could use fixing. The current legislation is deeply flawed, but is an attempt at fixing the problem. There are triggers and safeguards in the bill. There are a lot of enforcement provisions in the bill. If the citizens of the U.S. could rely on the bill actually being executed as promised and not manipulated and redefined in practice, there might be a lot more support. However the issue is that a great swath of the washed masses of the U.S. do not trust Congress, Bush and his administration and any future administration, especially Democrat to act honorably.
It gets down to trust. There is a reason why the country has such a low opinion of Congress and of the President. There is a crisis in confidence. Among Bush's base, there is a lack of trust that he can control anything and that he can make solid impartial decisions. We see him being the "Spending President", the "Open Borders President", The Bad War Manager President", among others.
Congress is no better. This illegal immigration bill has been rammed down the throats of the citizens. No one trusts Congress to do the right thing. Sure this seems to be a bi-partisan bill... Rinos and Dems vs. Conservatives. I throw Bush in the Rino category at this juncture of his administration. Rather than showing strength he is caving in to everything.
However, give Bush credit, he has always been an open borders proponent. However his leadership in securing our border has been dreadful... and that's a fact. We can't trust Bush to seal the border. We can't trust an uncredible Congress to keep any measure for long without sticking their nose in and making it absolutely worse. Track Record? On immigration reform it's lousy.
We just can't trust the President or Congress to execute the immigration bill with any kind of confidence. That's reason enough to squash it now.