bush immigration speech

I watched most of Bush’s immigration speech last night, and it was probably the best speech I’ve seen him make. He was very balanced, full of comprised ideas, and not overly one sided. If he acted close to this on other issues especially Iraq he would have had a more successfully presidency (at least in my eyes). With Iraq the attitude was basically the administrations way or the highway. It didn’t matter what some people in congress said, members of his fathers administration said, pretty much every other country in the world cautioned, the administration was determined to invade Iraq during March 2003 no matter what.

As for the immigration problem, I don’t what the best solution is, maybe the White Houses will be good, maybe not, but at least it seems well thought out which is a step in the right direction. The basic issue is really globalization. Just like many service jobs are getting outsourced to other countries such as India due to lower labor costs there, many jobs in the US are getting taken by lower wage workers to save on labor cost. If a company can get a worker to do a job for $8 an hour why would they want to hire somebody for $16 an hour, it’s just basic economics. Short term solutions like a fence or temporary worker programs don’t address the root cause of the problem which is issue of globalization and multinational corporations being able to get cheaper labor from poorer countries. The best (and probably most difficult) way to solve the problem is to improve Mexico’s economy so workers there have a higher salary and have less reason to sneak into the US to work.