Bush stresses immigration

GUATEMALA CITY - President Bush yesterday said he wants the House and Senate to pass immigration bills by August but said the U.S. will continue to send home illegal aliens caught in the meantime, disappointing his Guatemalan hosts who wanted all deportations to end.

“The United States will enforce our law. It’s against the law to hire somebody who’s in our country illegally, and we are a nation of law,” Mr. Bush said.

He said his plan is to find a bill “most Republicans are comfortable with” in the Senate, then begin working with Democrats in the Senate, before turning to the House.

But he received an earful from Guatemalan President Oscar Berger, who said he was worried Guatemalans are being deported “without clear justification,” based on a raid at a leather goods factory last week in Massachusetts.

“The Guatemalan people would have preferred a more clear and positive response no more deportations, so to say,” he said, according to a translation of his remarks at a joint press conference with Mr. Bush.

Mr. Bush had come to Guatemala to tout what he called yesterday the United States’ “great mission of compassion” in Latin America.

He visited a clinic to watch U.S. military doctors and nurses dispense health care, and lugged lettuce at a produce-packing plant that supplies Wal-Mart Central America, among other customers, to demonstrate the benefits of free trade.

“We want people to achieve their God-given potential,” Mr. Bush told farmers while visiting the fourth country in his five-nation tour of Latin America.

In their press conference later, the two leaders also said there is a need for regional cooperation and information-sharing to combat drug-trafficking.

“We should no longer work in isolation; we should work jointly,” Mr. Berger said, while his U.S. counterpart promised to try to reduce Americans’ drug use to dampen the market.

“I am a ‘If they break the law, arrest them,’ person,” Mr. Bush said.

But moments later, the press conference discussion turned back to its dominant topic Mr. Bush’s plan to legalize most of the estimated 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in the U.S., with three of four questions touching on the issue.

One Guatemalan reporter charged the U.S. with showing a “lack of respect for the rights of Guatemalan immigrants.” The reporter asked why deportations can’t be suspended because Mr. Bush expects to sign a bill that will legalize most illegal aliens.

Last week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided a Michael Bianco Inc. leather goods factory in New Bedford, Mass., netting more than 350 illegal aliens, many of them Guatemalans. They are now being detained as they await immigration proceedings.

“The deportations took place as a result of law enforcement enforcing the law,” Mr. Bush said. “They didn’t say ‘Well maybe there’s Guatemalans there, let’s go and get them.’”

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