Bush's Enforcement Record

Anyone tempted to give President Bush's recent rhetoric about enforcing American immigration law and defending our borders any credibility whatsoever should take a long, hard look at the administration's five year record of immigration law enforcement first.

Federal agents arrested 953 illegal immigrants at work sites in 2000, congressional investigators reported Monday. By 2004, the work site arrests had fallen to 159. Likewise, 178 employers received notice of a potential fine for hiring illegal immigrants in 2000. In 2004, only three employers received the fine notices.

"It's no wonder that many employers view enforcement as a remote possibility, and any civil penalties as a cost of doing business," Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said Monday. "And it is also no wonder that many Americans are skeptical that the federal government is serious about enforcing the laws."
Even in California, home to more illegal immigrants than any other state, authorities generally have lagged in enforcing a sweeping 1986 immigration law.

The last time a California employer paid a fine for hiring illegal immigrants was in 1999, a database maintained by the Center for Immigration Studies shows, at www.cis.org/sanctions/. Sacramento County hasn't seen an employer sanction case since 1995, according to the employer sanctions database.

So after five years of deliberately ignoring immigration law and permitting millions of illegal aliens to invade the US while letting employers know that the government had absolutely no intention of enforcing the law, President Bush and the GOP leadership in the Senate want the American people to believe that they will rigorously enforce our laws under the "comprehensive immigration reform" adopted by the Senate (Martinez-Hagel)? The only possible explanation is that President Bush and the open-borders crowd truly think the American people to be stupid.