WP: Bush Proposal Prompted Surge in Illegal Immigrants

[kskiska]

Watchdog Group Claims Administration Sought to Cover Up Data

President Bush's proposal for a guest worker program to help stem the tide of illegal immigration actually prompted a surge of illegal border-crossings that the administration then sought to cover up, a watchdog group charged today, citing a 2004 survey by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Judicial Watch, a Washington-based public interest group, said the survey, obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request, showed that 61 percent of a sample of detainees who had been caught illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexican border in the wake of Bush's proposal said they had been informed by the Mexican government or the media that the Bush administration was offering amnesty to illegal immigrants. Nearly 45 percent said the purported amnesty influenced their decision to enter the United States illegally, Judicial Watch said.

"The results indicated that President Bush's proposal had actually lured greater numbers of illegal immigrants to violate the law," the group said in a 16-page report on the Border Patrol survey. It said the Bush administration aborted the survey on Jan. 27, 2004, within a few weeks after it began, because it was producing "politically inconvenient and/or potentially embarrassing data." The U.S. government never issued a report based on the survey.

"The White House directed Homeland Security public affairs officers to deliberately withhold information from the public and the media about the Border Patrol survey and a related spike in illegal immigration," Judicial Watch said, citing documents it obtained under the FO

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/28/AR2005062801135.html

[WhiteTara]

1. has this idiot ever done a single thing without

terrible unintended consequences? I can't think of a single thing
:puke:

[BlueManDude]

2. I wouldn't hire him to do filing or copying for me.

A total failure.

[Igel]

3. Isn't this just the oft-made and oft-denied claim:

Amnesties engender that which they forgive?

[customerserviceguy]

4. Chimpy likes illegals

His business buddies would rather hire workers for dirt cheap who can't complain to OSHA, etc.

[Moderator]

5. kick

[Judi Lynn]

6. Watchdog says government hid border survey

June 29, 2005, 12:58AM

Watchdog says government hid border survey
Administration denies findings were withheld so they wouldn't embarrass Bush
By EUNICE MOSCOSO
Cox News Service

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Border Patrol conducted a survey of illegal immigrants at the Mexican border immediately after President Bush announced his temporary worker plan last year but never made the results public, according to federal documents obtained through a Freedom of Information request by the group Judicial Watch.

The administration released about half of the 1,711 surveys to the conservative public interest group. A Judicial Watch analysis of those responses shows that 45 percent of illegal immigrants said they decided to cross the border based on rumors of a Bush administration amnesty.

The survey — which began Jan. 7, 2004, and was slated to last six months — was called off by the end of January. One e-mail, dated Jan. 29, 2004, describes the total number of "positive responses" within the 1,711 questionnaires as 655, or 38 percent. The identities of the e-mail's sender and recipient were redacted by the Border Patrol, and it is not known what "positive responses" means.

In addition, the administration ordered public relations staffers at the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection not to talk about amnesty or spikes in apprehensions at the border.
(snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3245255
(Free registration required)

[megatherium]

7. The left is going to be blindsided by the illegal immigration issue

in 2008. This issue is rapidly gaining traction on the right, who are beginning to realize the corporations' role in illegal immigration. A political candidate who dismisses public concerns about illegal immigration, or who seems more concerned about the rights of undocumented workers than the well-being of legal residents, may be in trouble.

I base these musings on my own parents' anger at this issue. My parents are conservative democrats, but they are indeed angry at this. They're well-informed and well-educated (mom has a masters degree; dad has a law degree), and they live in Portland, Oregon. I don't think it would be fair to suggest their apprehension is a kind of racism: my parents were active in the early 1960s in civil rights. They were Kennedy volunteers. But they're angry that 9 percent of the Mexican population now resides in the US, and that whole industries of unionized labor have been replaced with poorly-paid Mexican workers.

[annabanana]

8. We DO need a discussion on this.

It is good for us when there is a break in the corporate/cultural wings of the right, but the natural home of the blue collar should be a union friendly left, and that is hard to reconcile with our expansive nature.

[Mari333]

9. eveything he does turn to shite.