Bush orders troops to Mexico border

President Bush will deploy up to 6,000 National Guard reservists to the southern border of the United States in an effort to stem the tide of immigrants crossing illegally from Mexico. With opinion polls charting a steep decline in support from the conservatives who have been the president's bedrock, Bush announced the measure in a rare televised address from the Oval Office on May 15, as part of a $1.9 billion plan for reforms on immigration. "We do not yet have full control of the border, and I am determined to change that," Bush said. Bush spoke of finding the middle ground between a program of mass deportation of 12 million people ("neither wise nor realistic," he said) and a total citizenship amnesty. The troops of the National Guard, a military force of "weekend warriors" normally under the control of state governors, would serve two-week stints before rotating out of the assignment. Keeping the force level at 6,000 over the course of a year would require up to 156,000 troops at a time when the US military is stretched. Tens of thousands in the National Guard are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Detention facilities, such as those constructed by Vice President Dick Cheney's former company Halliburton, will be increased, and legal procedures speeded up so that illegal immigrants can be quickly deported. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the administration hoped to begin deploying the Guard in June. Pentagon officials said the force would remain at full strength for only a year, and pledged to cut the number of Guard troops by half in the second year of the border mission. "Some units who lived to invade North Korea are going to have to take a deep breath," said Arnold L. Punaro, chairman of the Commission on the National Guard and Reserve. Bob Thrasher, who served as the adjutant general of the California Guard from 1987 to 1992, said missions like the border support task outlined by Bush do not call for specialized training. "You can relate almost any skill in the military to homeland security," he said. "But with this kind of mission they are looking for bodies, they are not looking for skills." The president said that the National Guard troops would fill in temporarily while the nation's Border Patrol, a civilian force, is expanded. Bush also called for enactment of a guest worker program to allow immigrants to take low-paying jobs, and he said employers must be held to account for hiring illegal immigrants. He said a tamper-proof identification card for workers would "leave employers with no excuse" for violating the law. He stressed that those who want to earn citizenship should have to assimilate into society, learn English, pay fines for breaking the law and pay back taxes. "What I have just described is not amnesty," Bush said. "We will construct high-tech fences in urban corridors, and build new patrol roads and barriers in rural areas. We'll employ motion sensors, infrared cameras and unmanned aerial vehicles to prevent illegal crossings." Activist Enrique Morones of San Diego, CA, said that "This is militarization, and it is born of the idea that immigrants are enemies, which is simply not acceptable." Morones founded Border Angels, a humanitarian group previously known as the Water/Winter Stations, whose aim is to reduce the number of heat- and cold-related deaths along the border near San Diego. "We Latinos are going to take to the streets again if the conservative sectors insist on their plans to criminalize us," said the activist, whose group was one of the engines behind the mass demonstrations held by millions of immigrants in cities in the United States between March and May. The last time the United States sent the National Guard to the Mexican border was between 1916 and 1920. The mission of the 6,000 troops was to keep Mexican revolutionaries from crossing into the United States, said historian José Villalpando. The US also sent 3,000 troops to Mexico in 1846, at the start of the Mexican-American war, and in 1866, when it deployed 180,000 troops to the border after the French occupied Mexico. Bush's tough talk on border security was intended to reassure conservatives who have agitated for harsher treatment of illegal immigrants in the run-up to mid-term elections. On May 15 in a speech to a conservative think-tank, Karl Rove, the White House adviser said: "We have got a border that is so porous, who knows whether that is simply an illegal immigrant looking to get a job in a landscaping company, or somebody who wants to do something worse?" Bush's announcement came shortly after the US Senate resumed debate on legislation that would offer millions of undocumented immigrants guest worker status and a path to citizenship, by contrast to the bill approved in December by the House of Representatives, that would build more fences along the border, criminalize illegal immigration, and make it a federal crime to offer services or assistance to undocumented immigrants. Under the Senate bill, the result of a compromise agreement between Democratic and Republican leaders, immigrants who have lived in the United States for at least five years would be allowed to stay, and would be able to apply for citizenship if they met certain requirements, such as speaking English, paying a fine and back taxes, and passing a criminal background record check. Those who have been in the United States between two and five years would have to return to their home country briefly, but would then be allowed to re-enter as temporary workers and could apply for citizenship. Immigrants in the country for less than two years would be subject to deportation. The Senate voted overwhelmingly on May 24 to limit debate on the legislation, clearing the way for final passage later this week. The Senate is calling for at least 370 miles of new triple-layered fencing on porous sections of the 2,000-mile US-Mexican border. The plan also calls for 500 miles of additional vehicle barriers. The $1 billion proposal, approved by a vote of 83-16, is less extensive than a 700-mile fence proposed by the House bill, but it puts both chambers of Congress in support of building expanded barriers across the southwestern border. The Senate is also calling for tougher employer penalties on businesses that hire illegal workers. Employers who do not use a new computerized system could be fined $200 to $600. The system would include information from the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and Homeland Security Department. There would be $20,000 fines for hiring illegal immigrants once the new screening system is in place, double the current maximum. Repeated violators could be sentenced to prison terms of up to three years. Congress passed employer sanctions as part of a 1986 amnesty law, but they were never fully enforced and workers and employers got around them with fraudulent documents. Workers' information would have to be submitted to the electronic system within three days after the worker is hired. The Homeland Security Department would have to confirm the worker is legal or tell the employer the worker can't be immediately confirmed as a legal worker within 10 days. "This is probably the single most important thing we can do in terms of reducing the inflow of undocumented workers, making sure we can enforce in a systematic way rules governing who gets hired," said Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). English only In a new twist to the contentious debate, the Senate also voted to designate English the national language of the United States, and to effectively ban federal government ordinances and services in any language other than English. The 63-34 vote, on an amendment offered by James Inhofe (R-OK), split the Senate largely along party lines, with nine of the 44 Democrats voting for it, and one Republican voting against. The amendment has mainly symbolic significance and may not make it into the Senate bill, let alone into the final version that must be agreed with the House for Congress to send for signature to Bush. But in a confusing debate, passions ran high, with the Democratic minority leader Harry Reid labeling the amendment "racist," and Ken Salazar, a Colorado Democrat of Hispanic ancestry, calling it "divisive and anti-American." Not only does it overrule any claims to multilingual services, but the measure also stipulates rigorous testing to ensure would-be citizens have a sound knowledge of both the English language and US history. Muddying the waters further, the Senate then passed by a 58-39 margin a more moderate amendment that declares English merely to be the "common unifying language of the US." Over 47 million US citizens speak a language other than English at home. Spanish speakers make up just under 30 million of that total.