Bush calls for Guard on border

President Bush’s remarks

President Bush yesterday called for sending 6,000 National Guard troops to U.S. borders to back up the Border Patrol and also said state and local police officers should be allowed to help enforce federal immigration law.

“The Guard will assist the Border Patrol by operating surveillance systems, analyzing intelligence, installing fences and vehicle barriers, building roads and providing training,” he said. “Guard units will not be involved in direct law-enforcement activities.”

But he also said new enforcement must be coupled with a guest-worker program and a way to deal with the estimated 10 million to 12 million illegal aliens now in the country.

“All elements of this problem must be addressed together — or none of them will be solved at all,” the president said, speaking from the Oval Office in a nationally televised 17-minute address last night.

The immigration debate has been raging on Capitol Hill since December, when the House passed an enforcement-only bill. It has only intensified as millions of illegal-alien supporters marched in American cities, U.S. citizens stepped up their own patrols of the border, and the Senate began its debate on a broad strategy to legalize many illegal aliens.

Mr. Bush waded into that debate last night, following the House’s lead in emphasizing border security but also backing the Senate’s approach to current illegal aliens.

He said longtime illegal aliens should be awarded a right to citizenship while recently arrived illegal aliens should not. He did not say what the cutoff date should be, nor whether those who didn’t qualify would be deported, but he said those awarded citizenship are not getting amnesty.

“What I have just described is not amnesty. It is a way for those who have broken the law to pay their debt to society and demonstrate the character that makes a good citizen,” he said.

Mr. Bush insisted that those in his proposed guest-worker program would not have a path to citizenship. That sets him on a collision course with the Senate, where the major proposal would grant participants in the guest-worker program a path to citizenship.

He blamed decades of poor border and interior immigration enforcement for the problem and said fraudulent documents make it “difficult for employers to verify that the workers they hire are legal.”

But it’s not clear whether he won any new supporters among the competing factions of enforcement-only conservatives in the House and Senate Republicans who demand a path to citizenship for some illegal aliens in any final bill.

“I don’t think it moves [the debate] very much,” said Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican and a proponent of the enforcement approach. “It demonstrated a willingness to discuss enforcement, but the commitment hasn’t been there for 5 years.”

Mr. King said a wall along the Mexico border would be far cheaper and more effective than the increases in personnel, but he said Mr. Bush does deserve credit for urging immigrants to assimilate, learn English and respect the American flag.

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