Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Policy?

So, the President is planning on sending the National Guard to "defend" the southern boarders of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas from the influx of immigrants, among other things. I have some questions.

First question: Who's going to pay for the National Guard moving into these states? Will it be the federal government, who made these plans, or the states, who I don't think actually asked for the National Guard to get involved? Will it be funded through the Boarder Patrol and give the nation an approximation of how much 6,000 new people in the Boarder Patrol will cost?

(Ultimately, I know, the people who pay are the people who aren't actually making big decisions, but there are a lot more people to spread the fee around to if all the tax payers in the nation are involved as opposed to the tax payers of four states.)

Second Question: Will the National Guard rotation now be one year Iraq, six month to work, one year boarder patrol, six months to work, one year Iraq?

Third Question: Why is it the job of the National Guard to keep people out of the country, but not evacuate cities in the path of a hurricane?

Fourth Question: How is creating a path for "illegal immigrants who have roots in our country and want to stay ... [by paying] a meaningful penalty for breaking the law, [by paying] their taxes, [by learning] English, and [by working] in a job for a number of years" not a form of amnesty?

Is it just because it will take several years to achieve and it has more steps than the general amnesty granted in the '70s?

Fifth Question: What, exactly, is a "temporary worker program" and will it extend to workers from any nation or just Mexico?

Sixth Question: Bush said, "We need to hold employers to account for the workers they hire." Yet he only spoke about making it easier to verify legal immigrants and harder for illegal immigrants to get phony documents. How is that holding employers accountable for hiring illegal immigrants? Doesn't it just make it easier for employers who like to hire illegal immigrants to find the cheap labor?

Shouldn't employers be held accountable through harsh fines or boards of directors being thrown in prison? Wouldn't that slow the hiring of illegal immigrants and, probably, slow the influx if illegal immigrants?

Seventh Question: What good will a "high tech" wall do? Allow us to count the number of people who enter illegally more accurately?

Eighth Question: Wasn't the Republican Party once for shrinking the size of the federal government and being financially responsible? What happened? (And saying "9/11 happened" won't work. All those men came to this country legally.)

Ninth Question: Isn't immigration policy just a convenient and easy way to rile up Congress and make it look like they're actually doing something constructive before the mid-term elections this November?

Tenth Question: Since this immigration thing is all about getting Republicans elected (or reelected), when is the Strategic Oil Reserve going to be tapped to make Republicans really popular?

Click this sentence for a transcript of the speech.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I challenge you to find someone who can actually answer those questions. That oughta' keep you occupied for a while.

ticknart said...

I'm sure I could find a couple of people to answer these questions with sarcasm.