President Bush endorses slavery

President Bush's Oval Office address to the nation Monday night might as well have been the starting gun in a marathon run from Mexico City to San Diego.

"There are differences between an illegal immigrant who crossed the border recently and someone who has worked here for many years," the president said.

How recent is recently? How many is many? Never mind, get here and get here quick, and try to have a baby, premature if possible. The president gives extra points for "a home, a family."

President Bush tried to argue that border security cannot succeed unless every non-criminal who wants to cross illegally is offered a method to come in legally. "The reality is that there are many people on the other side of our border who will do anything to come to America," he said. "A temporary worker program would reduce the appeal of human smugglers and make it less likely that people would risk their lives to cross the border."

The president said "temporary workers must return to their home country at the conclusion of their stay." He didn't explain how people who are willing to "walk across miles of desert in the summer heat, or hide in the back of 18-wheelers" would be persuaded to go, especially if they had established "a home, a family."

Apparently the plan is to work them twenty-four hours a day so they don't need a place to live.

President Bush said a temporary worker program is essential to "meet the needs of our economy." There's no question that cheap, abundant labor is good for business. Anything that holds down costs is good for business. Whether it's good for you depends on what you do for a living. It's good for President Bush. He's got the only job in America that the Constitution bars foreign-born people from taking.

The president went on to offer a plan for I-swear-it's-not-amnesty. "We must face the reality that millions of illegal immigrants are already here," he explained.

You don't say. Who knew?

"I believe that illegal immigrants who have roots in our country and want to stay should have to pay a meaningful penalty for breaking the law, to pay their taxes, to learn English and to work in a job for a number of years," the president said. "People who meet these conditions should be able to apply for citizenship but approval would not be automatic, and they will have to wait in line behind those who played by the rules and followed the law."

Now this is really evil. When the president says he would require immigrants to "work in a job for a number of years," he calls to mind the post-Civil War laws that required newly-freed slaves to sign long-term contracts to work in the fields, contracts that said they would lose everything if they quit early.

The Fourteenth Amendment made laws like that unconstitutional.

The president's proposal would divide the immigrant community into a four-level caste system: temporary workers (who must eventually return to their home country), recent illegal immigrants (who presumably could be deported), illegal immigrants with "roots" (who qualify to apply for citizenship), and legal immigrants.

He's got to be kidding.

He must be kidding because he spoke of a tamper-proof ID card, and that's a joke.

There was some good news in the president's speech. He had lots of ideas for securing the border. Let's do that.


Copyright 2006

Editor's note: You can read more about the post-Civil War "Black Codes" in the appendix to The 37th Amendment, "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing," online at http://www.ExtremeInk.com/appendix.htm. You might also be interested in the recent post, "Decoding the Immigration Debate."

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