Hill conservatives warn Bush of amnesty anger

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House conservatives yesterday issued a dire warning to President Bush and Republican leadership that they will pay a devastating political price if they proceed with a guest-worker program or anything resembling amnesty for illegal aliens before securing the borders and enforcing existing immigration laws.

"They will remember in November," Rep. J.D. Hayworth, Arizona Republican, said of voters nationwide. "And many of those who have stood with our Republican majority in the last decade are not only angry, many of them plan to be absent from the polls" this year when the entire House and one-third of the Senate is up for re-election.

Mr. Hayworth and more than a dozen other House Republicans pointed to polls that show overwhelming support for their strict-enforcement stance and advised Mr. Bush and GOP leaders in both chambers to "listen to the common sense of the American people."

One Republican, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, fired a warning shot specifically at Sen. John McCain. The Arizona Republican widely expected to be a 2008 presidential hopeful at that moment was holding a press conference across the Capitol with, among others, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.

"Those elected officials who are insisting on a guest-worker program and diluting the efforts of border security and internal enforcement are telling the American people exactly whose side they are on," Mr. Rohrabacher said. "The American people now have that opportunity to make that determination, and they will. Senator McCain and others will find out about that, when they find their own career is short term."

Those sentiments were only buttressed, the lawmakers said, by the images in recent days across the country of thousands marching in opposition to tough immigration reform.

"I say if you are here illegally and want to fly the Mexican flag, go to Mexico and wave the American flag," said Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., Virginia Republican.

Senate action yesterday was confined to a single unanimous vote to study fatalities among foreigners sneaking across the desert into the United States. But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, officially introduced his committee's 471-page proposal that would fine illegal aliens but allow them to remain in the U.S. while applying for citizenship.

Although conservatives in both chambers excoriated the Specter plan as "amnesty," other Republicans said momentum was shifting toward what they called a "comprehensive" border security bill that includes a guest-worker program that provides illegal aliens with a path to citizenship.

"Among the Republican conference, I see a shift toward a comprehensive view to solve this problem," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, who is among four Republicans who voted for Mr. Specter's proposal in committee. "From a Republican point of view, we need to be wise in the way we deal with this politically."