Washington – President Bush, calling the nation’s current immigration situation unacceptable, urged senators to try again to pass legislation that he described as imperfect but the best option available.
In his weekly Saturday radio address, Bush said the bill would not grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, that they would have to pay fines and take other steps to get on a path to legal status and possibly citizenship.
“Securing the border and upholding family values are not partisan concerns,” the president said. “They must be addressed, and this bill is the best way to do it.”
The White House and a bipartisan group of senators drafted the wide- ranging bill, but attacks came from the left and right during weeks of Senate wrangling. When the Senate failed Thursday to end debate and schedule a vote, Democratic leaders set the bill aside without promise of reviving it.
Bush plans to lunch with Republican senators in the Capitol on Tuesday, as part an attempt to convince party conservatives that the compromise bill is much better than the status quo.
He said the bill “puts border security first, establishes a temporary worker program to meet the legitimate needs of our growing economy, sets up a mandatory system for verifying employment eligibility, and resolves the status of the estimated 12 million people who are here illegally.”
Conceding that a 1986 immigration overhaul failed, the president said his administration “is determined to learn from the mistakes of the past decades.”
The bill would double the number of Border Patrol agents, he said, build more border fences and employ infrared sensors and unmanned aircraft to detect border-crossers.
