I agee with Bush
Ok, it’s early enough in the morning for me to claim plausible deniability later on for this post. 
So, I agree with Bush. On at least one or two things. And it frustrates me.
Over the past 6 years my agreement with the decisions and aims of the current administration have been few and far between. I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the times I’ve been frustrated and appalled by something they’ve done.
But when they’re right, they’re right. And when their opposition is wrong, they’re just wrong.
Two things come specifically to mind:
- The ports deal
- Illegal immigration
Let’s drill in:
The ports deal – Yes, we all get it. Arabs are scary terrorists, and thank heavens we were able to stop those folks from Dubai from blowing up all our ports by preventing them from operating the ports.
Ok, that’s just too stupid a sarcasm to even continue. Nobody in congress actually thought the Dubai folks operating the ports were any sort of real terror threat. That’s just ridiculous. Our port operations are already outsourced out of the country, but the folks neglecting port security on a daily basis are all homegrown. By scuttling the ports deal, all we did was send a loud-and-clear message to one of the only western-friendly middle-eastern countries: we don’t trust you. Good work, detractors!
Illegal immigration – My agreement on this one is a little more hedged. Illegal immigration is a huge problem.
Digression: note that it should ABSOLUTELY NOT be confused with legal immigration. This is also a huge problem, but because there’s TOO LITTLE of it, not too much. We need to make it easier, much easier, for immigrants to legally come to the US. Especially, but not limited to, highly productive immigrants who fill needed jobs that might otherwise end up being off-shored (ie – the H1B crowd). I believe that the whole offshoring trend is a direct response to the inability to fill positions in the US with qualified people, even more than the alleged “cost savings” it provides.
Back to my comments on illegal immigration: We have now 10+ million (some say even 12+) illegal immigrants in this country. And many of them have children who are citizens because they were born in the US. I’d argue that’s a law in need of serious review, but that’s for another day. So, we now have a situation where you can’t easily send the parents back, because their kids can legally stay. Plus, let’s get real — there are millions and millions of them. And quite a large number of them are gainfully employed (albeit illegally).
So, although I agree 100% with Lou Dobbs that it’s a huge problem in need of fixing, and I agree with him that free amnesty is a bad idea, I don’t think it’s as simple as building a wall and sending them all back.
I guess that means I agree (mostly) with Bush then. Ugh. We need a solution that is realistic. We need a solution that will actually draw them out (ie – amnesty that the illegal immigrants are afraid to use is useless). We need a solution that will draw these folks not just “out” to become legal, but also “in” to American society — it serves nobody to have an entire subclass of millions of people. And finally, we need a solution that makes it unlikely that we’ll end up in this same situation again in the future: stronger security to prevent illegal immigration, combined with a more realistic legal immigration program.
Nobody’s got this quite right, as far as I can tell. But Bush is closer than the reactionary congress viewpoint.
