Bush courts Hispanic vote in election year
Millions of illegal migrant farmers, hotel maids and others working in the shadows of American society would be granted legal status and freed from the threat of deportation under an election-year proposal President George Bush wants Congress to approve.
Bush called Mexican President Vicente Fox to brief him today in advance of a White House speech.
“There are some jobs in this country, in our growing economy, that Americans are not filling,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. “That presents an opportunity for workers from abroad who want to work.”
Bush’s proposals break a virtual silence on immigration since the September 11 attacks raised fears about border security.
The president argues that his plan would make America safer by giving the government a better idea of who was crossing US borders, bolster the economy by meeting employers’ need for willing low-wage workers, and fulfil a mandate for compassion by guaranteeing the rights and legitimacy of illegal workers.
Likely to be left unsaid during the president’s speech were the political dividends White House advisers hoped the proposal would pay.
By dangling the prospect of legal status to eight million illegal immigrants now estimated to be in this country, about half of them Mexican, Bush was granting a top priority of the business community while making his most aggressive move yet to court Hispanic voters – the nation’s fastest-growing electoral bloc.
He won just over one-third of that constituency in 2000 but wants to expand his support in the community to better his chances for re-election in November.
The proposal would provide a way for illegal immigrants who can show they have employment to work legally, although temporarily, in the United States.
The new “temporary worker programme,” which also would include people still in their native countries who have a job lined up in the United States, would not, like the temporary visa programmes already in existence that involve mostly technical experts, apply only to a certain sector of the economy or industry.
