Immigration plan discouraged by GOP lawmakers

Immigration plan discouraged by GOP lawmakers

Trouble on the hacienda for Bush:

Last January, Bush proposed allowing foreign workers to apply for renewable three-year work permits. Illegal immigrants already in the United States would be eligible and would not have to face the deportation and waiting period before re-entering the country that the law now requires.

But soon after he made his proposal, the president's aides faced tough criticism from Republican lawmakers at a retreat in Philadelphia, and Mr. Bush seemed to put the proposal on the back burner.

Now his renewed focus sounds "petulant," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican and head of the House Immigration Reform Caucus.

"And then you come to the rank-and-file guys," Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) said, "who, on nine out of 10 items agree with the administration, this is the 10th item. And now, if it goes to number one on the priority list, it is the item where there will be serious debate and discussion and ultimately rejection of this initiative."

Here's W's dilemma: He, or perhaps Karl Rove, recognizes that the rapidly growing Hispanic population puts the Republican barely-there majority in jeopardy, and that the GOP needs an increased percentage of non-Cuban Hispanic votes.

But the big picture strategy, so clearly seen in 2004, is "appeal to the base." As I learned running for office in a rural, conservative area with a growing Hispanic population, small-town conservatives do NOT like immigration. The Republican base can't stand it when the family in front of them in line at Wal-Mart is speaking a language they don't understand. (I think it's "they're talking about me" paranoia myself.) The preferred solution to the immigration problem - always seen as a problem - is simple: Get a big bus, load it, point it south, and build a wall behind it.

Therein, as that great philosopher Dharma Finkelstien-Montgmery once said, squats the toad...