George W. Bush's Immigration Policy

Immigration is an issue at the heart of America. Today, with the exception of the few appropriately named Native Americans, every American is an immigrant or a descendent of an immigrant. In recent years the discussion of immigration policy in the United States has focused mainly around the regulation and selection of legal immigrants and the control and penalties regarding illegal immigrants.

In his more than six years in office, President George W. Bush's immigration rhetoric has changed in focus from encouraging legal immigrants to discouraging illegal immigrants. His policy has become increasingly emphasized on securing the border from illegal immigrants and deporting the illegal immigrants who are currently in the United States. His initial plan to discourage illegal immigration by catering to the needs of legal immigrants has disappeared from the rhetoric of his second term in office.

In his 2000 election campaign and throughout his presidency, Bush has stayed consistent in his support of a temporary worker program, increased border patrol, and a division of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) into the service arm of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the enforcement arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).[1] Bush's campaign promise to make the INS more efficient faded from his official statements of policy by his second term in office.

As Governor of Texas and as a Presidential candidate, Bush appeared sympathetic to Latinos and implied that his primary changes to immigration policy would entail streamlining the process of legal immigration with a secondary emphasis on enforcing the border. Bush planned to "establish a 6-month standard for processing immigration applications" by restructuring the INS as mentioned above; introducing "performance incentives for employees to process cases quickly, and make customer satisfaction a priority"; and by "fund[ing] new personnel and increased employee incentives" with 500 million dollars over five years.[2] His policy on border patrol was not delineated in his campaign. He prefaced his support for "increased efforts along the border" with the phrase, "because it is a federal responsibility to secure the border." This placated both sides of the illegal immigration issue.

With the hard-liner approach to illegal immigration that Bush currently uses, his 2000 emphasis on cushioning the legal immigration process seems like vote pandering. In campaign speeches, Bush claimed that "legal immigrants are the future and the changing face of America, and we should welcome them and treat them with respect" and "Latinos enrich our country with faith in God, a strong ethic of work and community and responsibility. We can all learn from the strength, solidarity, and values of Latinos."[3] Through his respectful speeches and proposed policy, Bush painted himself as sympathetic to the difficulties of Latinos involved in the immigration process and consequently received seventy percent more votes from Hispanic citizens than the Republican Bob Dole won against the Democrat Bill Clinton in 1996.[4]

While Bush kept his campaign promises, they have not accomplished the goals he wanted to achieve. Bush consolidated the issue of immigration into the larger one of homeland security after September 11^th. While he did succeed in separating the INS (it was separated in March 2003[5]), it was not an accomplishment touted in his reelection campaign.[6] Both of his other proposals to fix INS inefficiency were buried under his post September 11^th immigration message that capitalized on mainstream American fears of terrorism.

His reelection immigration rhetoric centered on keeping the borders airtight. On his reelection website, the Bush administration made eight statements about what it had accomplished with regards to immigration. Most important was the "signing of the smart border declaration" between the U.S. and Canada and a similar agreement with Mexico for "increas[ed] security." The other seven accomplishments listed included "an additional $1 million slated for new sensor technology" and the purchase of "700 high-speed vessels with communications systems." The preventative techniques for dealing with illegal immigration were bluntly replaced with high-tech ways to protect the borders.[7]

While immigration was not a focus of the Bush administration's agenda during his first term and the first year of his second term, it gained greater importance in early 2006 and was emphasized in Bush's 2007 State of the Union address.[8] While the State of the Union contained a few words of tolerance for legal immigrants ("We need to uphold the great tradition of the melting pot that welcomes and assimilates new arrivals"[9]), the majority of his comments and the majority of his current policy are directed towards the removal of illegal immigrants.

None of Bush's current plan for immigration includes simplifying the process of legal immigration. His plan includes increased border patrols (6,000 National Guardsmen have already been sent to the U.S.-Mexico border), 6,700 new detention beds to make crossing the border illegally less attractive, and increased arrests of employers who hire illegal workers in the United States.[10]

Critics of Bush's hard-liner approach to illegal immigration say that Americans do not want illegal immigrants' jobs. Bush's policy provides for this argument with the introduction of a "Temporary Worker Program" that will "fluctuate with market conditions" of the American economy. Bush's policy is harsh on the temporary workers who stay for longer than their guest worker status allows them to, making violators of the program permanently ineligible for a green card.[11] This program will not ease the difficulties of legal immigration and is not realistic in the expectation that "guest workers" will be satisfied and have an incentive to play by the rules without the possibility of U.S. citizenship.

On the issue of the twelve million illegal immigrants already in the United States, Bush's policy claims to find the "middle ground" between "animosity" and "amnesty."[12] Illegal immigrants must pay"a meaningful penalty" and "learn English, pay their taxes, pass a background check, and hold a job for a number of years before they will be eligible to be considered for legalized status." Furthermore, declared illegal immigrants must "wait their turn at the back of the line" to have their immigration application processed by the USCIS.[13]

This outlines a departure from the rhetoric of Bush's 2000 election. A hastened system of application processing for the ease of the legal immigrant has been replaced with the concept of punishing the illegal immigrant with the bureaucratic purgatory of the essentially unreformed USCIS. The fact that a "back of the line" system is effective as a penalty for illegal immigrants proves that the 2003 division of the INS into service and enforcement departments was not successful in increasing the speed and ease of the service responsibilities.

A more transparent place that the Bush administration presents its immigration policy priorities is through its budget. The mass of the budget designated for immigration goes towards the defense of the border and the detention and deportation of illegal immigrants. The Bush administration's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) touts the 93 percent increase in "border security" and 90 percent increase in "immigration enforcement" since 2001. In 2007, 3 billion dollars will be spent on Border Patrol, including 100 million dollars on "new technology." An additional 2.1 billion dollars will be spent on "detention and removal efforts." Bush's temporary worker program will cost 247 million dollars. Bush has fulfilled his 2000 campaign promise of a hundred million dollars a year to the USCIS for the creation of a "six-month processing standard for immigration applications" with 112 million dollars a year for the previous five years. However, the actual six-month processing has not been achieved and there is currently a backlog of 1.3 million cases with the USCIS. The all-time high backlog of 3.8 million cases occurred on Bush's watch in 2004.[14]

This shows that Bush is not really committed to actually easing the process for legal immigrants. Compared to other denominations of immigration spending, 100 million dollars is a drop in the bucket and has not come close to actually reforming the immigration application process. However, continuing to fund the program without publicizing it was a shrewd political move. For a mere 100 million dollars a year, Bush is impervious to charges of violating a campaign promise but remains focused on his number one priority of deterring illegal immigration and punishing illegal immigrants.

In 2000, immigration was not a central issue to Bush's campaign. The immigration issues he centered on were relatively non-partisan but benefited legal immigrants and aspiring legal immigrants. When Bush changed his tone in 2004 to a fierce denouncement of illegal immigrants, he committed large amounts of money to his new goals and erased his previous commitments to legal immigrants from his rhetoric. While those prior commitments were honored in dollars and cents they were not given sufficient funds to accomplish real world results. Conversely, Bush's rhetoric on the necessity to reduce and punish illegal immigrants has only intensified from 2004 to 2007 and is increasingly supported financially with a purpose of accomplishing meaningful change in demographics.

[1] Immigration Reform News Archive. The White House. Retrieved Feb. 25, 2007. http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/immigration/archive.html

[2] Immigration. George W. Bush for President - November 1, 2000. http://web.archive.org/web/20001110161400/www.georgewbush.com/issues/immigration.html

[3] Ibid.

[4] Presidential Election Exit Poll Results. Cnn.com. Retrieved Feb. 27, 2007. http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/elections/natl.exit.poll/index1.html

[5] About USCIS. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Retrieved Feb. 25, 2007. http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=2af29c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD&vgnextchannel=2af29c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD

[6] Homeland Security. GeorgeWBush.com, op. cit.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Immigration Reform News Archive, op. cit.

[9] President Bush Delivers State of the Union Address. Whitehouse.gov. Retrieved Feb. 28, 2007. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070123-2.html

[10] Immigration Reform News Archive, op. cit.

[11] Ibid.

[12] President Bush Delivers State of the Union Address, op. cit.

[13] Immigration Reform News Archive, op. cit.

[14] Department of Homeland Security. Office of Management and Budget. Retrieved Mar. 2, 2007. http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/dhs.html