More on Illegal Immigration

President Bush will be giving a speech in prime-time about illegal immigration, a subject which is bleeding conservative support away from the GOP. The upshot is it's likely to do no good. Why? Baldly put, it's because no one trusts him to secure the border any more than no one expects a Democrat to cut taxes. Putting 10,000 National Guards on the border will not fix the problem. The only way to fix the problem is to enforce the law and to reform and stream line legal immigration.

UPDATE:
From what I am seeing and reading it is as bad as I feared. Get this from quintessential party man Hugh Hewitt:

My interview with Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Julie Myers staggered me, undoing in a handful of minutes my confidence in the president's commitment to border security first. Either the president's team had not communicated effectively with sub-cabinet appointees about the fence, or the president doesn't really believe in the fence, because Assistant Secretary Myers is clearly not a proponent of the fence.

John Hawkins:

Amended grade: D-. At least he didn't use the, "jobs Americans won't do," line. So, he did deserve a small boost for that.

End Update

In related illegal immigration news I ran across this story in the Seattle Times:

PENDLETON, Ore. — Out of ideas and low on cash one cold morning, the man with the biggest badge in town put his meaty fingers on a keyboard and tapped out a letter to the leader of Mexico.

"Dear Precidente [sic] Fox," it began.

"My name is John Trumbo. I am Sheriff of Umatilla County in northeastern Oregon, United States of America." Illegal immigrants "from your country" who committed crimes here, the letter said, cost Americans lots of money.

Last year, more than 360 of "your citizens" spent time in jail "at a cost of $63 a day which equates to a request for payment of $318,843," the letter concluded. "At this time, you will not be billed for medical, dental and transportation costs. Your prompt attention to this request will be very much appreciated."

Trumbo goes on to explain about the very real cost to citizens in monetary and non-monetary fashions:

To anyone who asked, Trumbo explained:

The county has a daily jail capacity of 252 inmates but can afford staff and services for only 135 inmates. The sheriff's office should have a minimum of 27 patrol officers but can fund only nine. Between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. each day, no patrol officer is on duty.

"When people call the police, they expect to see the police," Trumbo says. "They see it on TV all the time. But there are times when I can't send anybody, because I don't have anybody, because I don't have the money."

One reason, he says: The department spends much of its $6.5 million annual budget on apprehending and jailing illegal immigrants.

***

In the past 16 years, the Hispanic population in 20 of Oregon's 36 counties has as much as tripled. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates the number of illegal immigrants in the state has jumped to as many as 175,000, compared with 25,000 in 1990.

The population increase has led to a corresponding rise in the number of undocumented immigrants who commit crimes. Trumbo says between nine and 15 of his jail beds are occupied each day by illegal immigrants from Mexico.

The Mexican Consul eneral for Oregon says Trumbo is racist. From the article:

The Mexican consul general for Oregon, Fernando Sanchez Ugarte, who received a copy of the letter, says he doesn't know whether Fox will respond. Ugarte says he personally dismissed the letter as political posturing, not to mention racist. The sheriff, he says, "is pinpointing one ethnic group," and he's not sending letters to the presidents of all the other countries in the world.

"If a visitor from Switzerland does something wrong while visiting Umatilla County," Ugarte says, "will Mr. Trumbo send a bill to the leader of Switzerland? I don't think so."

This is what we call in my house, bargin price baloney. If 9 to 15 beds a day of Trumbo's jail were filled by crime committing Swiss, and regular governmental channels were not doing anything about it, I imagine he would be writing to the Swiss government. The Swiss are not and the Mexicans are, race discrimination has nothing to do with it - or at the most very little.

Playing the race card, when hard facts do not support you, will lose you support you might otherwise enjoy. Case in point from Don Surber:

Mexican President Vicente Fox is allowed to sound worried about militarizing the border without being held accountable for his own actions. The Mexican government has sent instructions, given fake IDs to use in the US and otherwise encouraged citizens to break American law.

Baker wrote, "The president's plan could increase the strain with Fox, who has grown disenchanted with Bush's failure to ease immigration rules as promised. Fox for years has pressured Bush to help the 11 million illegal immigrants now in the United States, many of them from Mexico, with little to show for it."

Little to show for it? How many billions do these illegal aliens send back to prop up the economy of Foix's racketeer-influence, corrupt nation?

Senor Fox has been especially incompetent in running his country. Mexico cannot make a go of it even with NAFTA? That is Jimmy Carter-level incompetence.

A few weeks ago, I was Mr. Open Borders. But after that May Day fiasco, I see this is just another socialist plan to undermine America in the name of Illegal Alien Rights.