Once again, President Bush is attacking the source of a problem instead of the symptoms. This time, however, I'm not as certain it's going to work as well.

Take terrorism.  When we were attacked by al-Qaeda terrorists who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, the Clinton administration treated it as a simple criminal investigation.  Find the perpetrators, arrest them, end of story... right?  As we all know now, that wasn't the end.  Al-Qaeda terrorists attacked us again by exploding a truck bomb at Khobar Towers in 1996. Two years later, al-Qaeda operatives detonated almost simultaneous truck bombs at Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.  In 2000, al-Qaeda terrorists attacked the USS Cole, docked in Yemen.  All of these and other incidents were treated as individual criminal cases. To explain their activities as separate cases, the Clinton administration invented the myth of a whole new kind of terrorism: small loose networks, operating independently of State sponsorship. 

The Bush Administration, faced with multiple terror attacks on 9/11, didn't waste time trying to prosecute the individual groups of terrorists who carried out the attacks in law courts. For one thing, most of the actual perpetrators were already dead.  As I said, instead of treating the symptoms of the disease, the Bush administration went after the cause: the countries sponsoring the terrorists.  Instead of curing the symptoms, President Bush started work on eradicating the disease.  Without State sponsorship, huge, precisely-coordinated terrorist attacks are far less likely to occur.

Now, faced with the problem of corporations moving overseas due to increased globalisation, it looks like he's trying to do something about the root cause of it: overpriced labor. 

One of the main reasons manufacturing jobs have been flowing overseas for the last thirty years, and at an accelerated rate since the 1990's, is that it's just too expensive to pay Americans to do those jobs anymore.  Everyone knows this, yet it's like the elephant in the room -- if no one mentions it, it's not really there.  Everyone complains about jobs going overseas, but no one mentions the fact that for what a company has to pay an American worker for a year, it can hire a thousand workers in almost any other country.

With an influx of foreign labor desperate for jobs, and willing to work cheaper than union labor, I believe we're going to see a loosening of the death-grip unions have had on American-based companies for over fifty years.  Unions were a great idea when they started, but -- like a lot of good ideas -- became the thing they hated. Today, unions are even more oppressive to the American worker than the corporate barons that inspired their formation.  So, in an attempt to keep corporations from moving their manufacturing facilities overseas to take advantage of cheap labor, the President proposes to bring that labor to them. 

It's also sure to increase Bush's votes among Hispanics dramatically in the upcoming election. It might even put a few states that seem to be solidly Democratic back into play as possible Republican states.  California, for instance, has 55 electoral votes (270 are needed to win).  Over 80% of their population increase since 1990, according to the 2000 census, was due to Hispanic immigration. That's a powerful voting block, for a huge number of electoral votes.  Florida, with a heavy Hispanic population, has 27 electoral votes.  The state of Washington, though it only carries 11 electoral votes, increased its Hispanic population by 106% during the 1990s. New Jersey's 15 electoral votes, may vote Republican as well due to this proposal, due to a staggering 258% increase in the Hispanic population since 1990.

The questions is, are those benefits worth the cost?

It's bad enough that those who have already broken our laws to enter this country will get a free pass. That's an amnesty, whatever the President wants to call it.  The real down side to this proposal is that it would send the message around the world that if you can just get here, legally or not, you'll be treated as a legal immigrant.  That's the wrong message. Also, the proposal make absolutely no provision for tightening our borders, even putting the National Guard there to, well, guard the nation.  Without tighter border control, we might just as well do away with the USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) and border patrols altogether.

I have a feeling, though, a hope that the President is playing "good cop, bad cop" with the issue. I believe that he's making all the "up side" proposals, and leaving it up to Congress to insert all the "down side" items.  In other words, President Bush is holding out the carrot, while Congress's job is to wield the stick. Have you had enough metaphors in a single paragraph yet?

Before this immigration overhaul goes to the President's desk, Congress will likely have inserted provisions for better border control and (if we're lucky) criminal prosecution and deportation of those who break our immigration laws in the future.  If this isn't done, then this proposal is a HUGE mistake.  The good side of this proposal I haven't yet mentioned is that the immigrants who want to be legal will come out of the woodwork and register, freeing law enforcement from wasting time tracking them down.  They'll be able to devote their time and energy to tracking down the true illegals and criminals... and terrorists.  That's only possible with tighter border controls.

But we have to make sure that our Representatives and Senators do their job and secure the country's borders.  Make sure you contact them to let them know that you want them to add a provision for border protection to the President's immigration reform proposal.

Either that, or sign up for a course in Spanish today, amigo.