If Reform means Changes-made...

Six thousand National Guardsmen to the border. While I disagree with the concept of using troops; if you are going to use the military you need at-least two to three divisions (20-25,000 troops each) of regulars for atleast 6-years to do the job. The Guard are supposed to be part-time troops and their continued use strains the economy and their families; whereas regular troops have to be on-duty somewhere anyway. And to avoid unfortunate shootings like Enriques Valenzuela (the teenaged goatherd "accidentaly" shoot by Guardsmen) the troops need to be re-trained for border conditions and there long-enough to know their sector. And they need to be there long-enough to establish their military infastructure and to block-off and disrupt the entire culture of trans-border people and drug smuggling.

What I didn't hear was any strong message to the business community that it will be held to account for their use of undocumented or irregularily-documented workers....now, or in the future. As long as those jobs are there and available to the undocumented, people will cross the borders. While Bush called for 6,000 border gaurds, he did not call for greater employment enforcement. I reject the idea of knocks in the middle of the night by enforcement officers to immigrants' homes; but more than a few medium to large corporations' officers could stand a few days or weeks of inquisition over their hiring of illegals...and where the actual taxes-owed went. Just as the bootleggers were busted for taxes rather than booze; get the employers for tax-fraud and false reporting even if you can't for "irregular hiring"-practices. Businesses' with more than 10 or 15 employees could be audited by a number of governmental agencies to determine if they have been obeying the employment laws that have been on the books for over 15-years.

As part of the overall controversy, there's also the guest-workers vs. low-skilled visas vs. the highly skilled visa-quotas. From a pragmatic standpoint, do we “need” the highly-skilled as-much or more than the low-skills immigrants? In my own profession, the graduates schools are generally 50% or more foreign-nationals on student-visas…all hoping that their “unique” skills will allow them to stay in America while those same limited seats could have been filled by equally-talented and qualified US citizens who were passed-over. One reasons being that the foreign-nationals are willing to pay full-freight without scholarships and expensive grants. And while they were supposed to return home afterwards, the vast majority find ways to stay as “highly-skilled” immigrants through work-contacts made while in school.

Yet at the same time, disproportionally-few of those foreign-nationals actually stay in the profession and actually become licensed professinals. But by that time, the have achieved green-card status and are now free to pursue other lines of employment outside of the profession…yet their presence in the schools as visa-students denied talented US citizens the opportunity to enter the profession. And at the same time, almost every other nation forbids me from practicing in their country, reserving that “right” for their native-born.

Form a practical-basis, it probably does make sense to loosen the rules for those who have been here 10 to 20 years already simply as a recognition of reality. They are here and have assimulated already. But I would still support tighter limits on allowing student-visas and stricter enforcement that they return home afterwards…especially if the claim is that we need foreign-stuydents to spread our international influence. A foreign student who does not return home does not contribute to spreading American culture and influence at home, he’s here and possibly blocking the career-path of a US citizen, or even a green-card immigrant.