Immigration policy that reflects reality is needed

I have been wondering why President Bush, who prides himself on being a tough guy, turned wimpish at his meeting with President Vicente Fox last month in Waco, Texas.

Prior to the meeting, Fox was doing a lot of trash talking about the United States for putting up the "tortilla curtain," a fence along the San Diego border. To which, according to Ruben Navarrette (San Diego Tribune), Fox said, "No country that is proud of itself should build walls . . . it doesn't make sense." To which I might have responded, "No country that is proud of itself should allow its people to be denied an education, a job and encourage its people to leave their country."

When it comes right down to it, Bush seems unwilling to use his political capital in pressing for an immigration policy that reflects the reality of the world we live in today. On the one hand, he has the conservative members of his party calling for closing the borders; and on the other hand, he has the business community that relies on cheap labor and wants him to acknowledge how illegal immigrants are important to the economy. More and more, we are becoming a nation of consumers, addicted to foreign oil and foreign labor, and we aren't able to kick the habit.

While the two presidents are giving each other big "abrazos," it's the states that are struggling with the problems of Mexicans crossing the border illegally seeking to provide for their families, lured by U.S.employers who depend upon immigrant labor to compete. Utah state legislators, in their eagerness to respond to the growing public resentment over illegal immigration, dealt only with a symptom, which they saw as the problem — 14 illegal immigrants voting illegally. The solution they came up with was to take away drivers' licenses and replace them with driving privilege cards that cannot be used for government identification. But SB227 does little, if anything, to stop the fundamental problem of illegal border crossings.