Timing In the Immigration Issue -- And What About H5N1?

The New York Times and Associated Press reported yesterday:

President Bush vowed on Tuesday to get tough on illegal immigrants even as he urged Congress to adopt a temporary-worker program that would allow some to remain in the United States for as long as six years.

"We're going to get control of our borders," Mr. Bush said in the White House East Room just before signing a $32 billion domestic security bill that has big increases for the Border Patrol, including money for 1,000 new agents and improved technology. "We'll make this country safer for all our citizens."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department aims without exception to expel all those who enter the United States illegally. "Our goal at DHS (Homeland Security) is to completely eliminate the 'catch and release' enforcement problem, and return every single illegal entrant, no exceptions.

"It should be possible to achieve significant and measurable progress to this end in less than a year," Chertoff told a Senate hearing.

Thousands of "Mexicans who are caught entering the United States illegally are returned immediately to Mexico. But other parts of the system have nearly collapsed under the weight of numbers. The problem is especially severe for non-Mexicans apprehended at the southwest border," Chertoff explained.

"Today, a non-Mexican illegal immigrant caught trying to enter the United States across the southwest border has an 80 percent chance of being released immediately because we lack the holding facilities," he added.

"Through a comprehensive approach, we are moving to end this 'catch and release' style of border enforcement by reengineering our detention and removal process." Chertoff's remarks in favor of returning "every illegal entrant, no exceptions" appeared to conflict directly with the US policy toward illegal Cuban migrants.

Though Cubans picked up at sea are returned to their country, those who reach US soil by air, sea or ground are allowed to stay and work -- a fact Cuba says encourages dangerous illegal emigration attempts. Mr. Bush added, "If somebody is here illegally, we've got to do everything we can to find them." Once illegal immigrants are caught, he said, they must be "returned to their home countries as soon as possible."

Mr. Bush's words, among his most insistent on illegal immigrants to date, were intended to calm conservatives upset at his temporary-worker plan, which a number of Republicans view as an amnesty program. Mr. Bush first proposed the plan in January 2004, but it has run into resistance.

In a renewed effort to win support, the White House is now emphasizing the border enforcement part of the plan, but at the same time insisting that enforcement can work only as a part of what Mr. Bush on Tuesday called "a larger, comprehensive immigration reform program."

The timing of this re-focus on immigration issues by the Bush Administration coincides with the overall noise in the blogosphere (myself included) and other fronts (National Review) about the Harriet Miers nomination, and appears to be something of a conciliatory measure to reassure the more conservative base that the president has not abandoned his core.

I have no problem with a temporary worker program; it can be changed and amended when desired. Physically, there is no way to "expel" all those illegal aliens present in the country. The holding facilities and courts sufficient to handle the numbers simply don't exist. Vetting each person entering the country from this point out (or doing our best to do so) and buttressing our borders is a step in the right direction.

In addition, the avian H5N1 flu will impact how we conduct our immigration business as well. It's not a matter of if but when the bird flu arrives in the US, and when it converts from the avian population to the human population. LAX, which moves 10,000 persons a day, is already making plans to take 1,600 passengers at a time and move them to detention centers for a 4 to 10 day flu quarantine.

More on the avian flu issue later -- the potential hazard here is staggering -- perhaps not unlike the 1918 flu pandemic.