Exclusive: A Rising Star Offers His Own Immigration Plan (Time)

[kpete]

Web Exclusive| Nation
Exclusive: A Rising Star Offers His Own Immigration Plan
Leading House Conservative Mike Pence Tries to broker a deal between Bush and his right flank
By MIKE ALLEN/WASHINGTON


Posted Tuesday, May. 23, 2006
With the Senate headed toward a final vote on an immigration bill this week, a leader of House conservatives is asking his colleagues to support a free-market plan aimed at bridging the gulf between the versions in the two chambers. The proposal by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), provided to TIME ahead of an unveiling speech at the Heritage Foundation, is arguably less compassionate than the version being debated in the Senate and supported in principle by President George W. Bush. But it looks to be more palatable to House Republicans, many of whom have opposed creating a guest worker program before new border crackdowns have been given a chance to work.

Pence, a rising star in the House, is suggesting a temporary worker program based on a data base run by private industry. And unlike the leading plan in the Senate and the blueprint sketched by Bush, his “Border Integrity and Immigration Reform Act” would require all applicants to leave the country first. Pence tweaks a phrase from Bush’s address to the nation by calling the compromise “a REAL rational middle ground.” Even though Bush has said his preferred solution “ain’t amnesty,” Pence appeals to hard-liners by calling the compromise a “no-amnesty solution.”

“The solution is to set up a system that will encourage illegal aliens to self-deport and come back legally as guest workers,” Pence, the grandson of an Irish immigrant, says in prepared remarks. “The visa will be issued only outside of the United States. Outside of the United States. That is a key point because it is the provision that will require the twelve million illegal aliens to leave. Now, some of you are thinking to yourselves that 12 million people aren’t going to pack up and leave just to get a visa to come back legally. But, I believe most will.”

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http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1196991,00.html