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Those “Deep Roots” of Migrants

It is neither wise nor realistic to round up millions of people, many with deep roots in the United States, and send them across the border. ~George W. Bush There are some things that Mr. Bush said in his speech today that were right, most of which touched on his concessions to restrictionists in the […]

It is neither wise nor realistic to round up millions of people, many with deep roots in the United States, and send them across the border. ~George W. Bush

There are some things that Mr. Bush said in his speech today that were right, most of which touched on his concessions to restrictionists in the GOP who have pushed him to oppose further illegal immigration publicly in relatively strong terms (relative to his previous complete capitulation, that is).

He has come up with a shocking notion of deploying 6,000 from the National Guard to, well, guard the nation. But it is a mostly symbolic concession (6,000 is also the number by which the Border Patrol will supposedly be increased), but the Guard will not have any part in any actual enforcement, so what they are going to do there is anyone’s guess.

Steve Sailer, after showing the speech to be the reheated mush that it is, asks the perfectly reasonable question of where all these Guardsmen are coming from. However, gone (for the moment) at least is the empty-headed chatter about family values not ending at the Rio Grande. This is a slight improvement, but only a rhetorical one.

Update: Andrew Sullivan found “little wrong with” the speech. It is official. Mr. Bush and the GOP are doomed, and we are going to get a very bad immigration bill this year if the current leadership has anything to say about it.

Politically, it comes far too late to save the GOP’s bacon, and his stance of internal enforcement is so unsatisfactory that it will make little dent with committed supporters of immigration reform. He will probably satisfy many of those in the middle of the road with his combination of enforcement measures, border security and a guest worker program, but he will not staunch the bleeding in his own base with any kind of guest worker proposal. As most of these proposals have been cast, they are slow-motion amnesties, and critics have seen through this dodge before. Those critics will not be appeased in any event, but he has given them an easy target with his talk of “deep roots.”

His careless (or amazingly tone-deaf) remark about illegal immigrants having “deep roots” in this country will not go over well. It doesn’t go over very well with me. My grandmother’s family, which arrived in Massachusetts in 1634, has deep roots in America. People who arrived here illegally or legally ten years ago (or twenty-five years ago, etc.) do not. In practice, Mr. Bush would like to reward those who have been breaking our laws for the longest amount of time by refusing to “uproot” them, while those who happen to have arrived more recently are somehow more worthy of being sent home.

Of course, it is not as if this government has much concern about uprooting or displacing Americans with its trade policies. The deep roots of long-established American communities mean nothing to the prophets of “creative destruction,” but when someone talks of deporting illegal immigrants this administration discovers the importance of rootedness. There might be practical limitations to a deportation policy, or there might theoretically be some argument against the idea, but to cast it as a measure aimed at “uprooting” people who have “deep roots” is insulting and will be received as such by both his core supporters and his conservative critics.

There are other wowzers (thanks to the the melting pot, immigrants somehow renew “our spirit” and add to “the unity of America,” which they apparently do by making the country less homogenous), but Mr. Bush may begin to satisfy many by paying tribute to a rather vague idea of assimilation. Talk of “shared ideals” and “our history” are suitably nondescript that they can stand for just about anything you’d like to read into them.

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