Via the AP: Bush to Send Up to 6,000 Troops to Border
President Bush said Monday night he would order as many as 6,000 National Guard troops to secure the U.S. border with Mexico and urged Congress to give millions of illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship, as he tried to build support for a major overhaul of the nation’s tattered immigration laws.[...]
The Guard troops would mostly serve two-week stints before rotating out of the assignment, so keeping the force level at 6,000 over the course of a year could require up to 156,000 troops.
Still, Bush insisted, “The United States is not going to militarize the southern border.”
I am not sure what else you would call it. The only wiggle room would be that we aren’t permanently militarizing it.
Based on the summary (I have neither read nor watched the speech), it would seem that he tried to take the middle ground. One wonders if the net effect will be to make no one happy, or to make enough of the middle on this topic happy so as to allow for legislation to be passed.
We shall see.
And wow: the involvement of 156,000 troops. Given the strain on the Guard in recent years because of Afghanistan and Iraq (not to mention places like Bosnia before that), I can’t help but think that this puts an additional strain on those men and women.
More from me later.
Meanwhile, James Joyner live-blogged the speech and has the whole text as well.
May 15th, 2024 at 11:14 pm
By now it is clear that Bush’s main motivation for these sorts of schemes is to boost his own standing with the public. However, I don’t see how anyone–from the left or right–can look at this as anything other than an ineffectual, shameless PR move.
Who is he trying to appeal to with this thing? Or has he completely fallen off his rocker?
May 15th, 2024 at 11:52 pm
Yes excellent speech. Now lets hope the new presidential candidate in Mexico understands what is going on and improves conditions over there. I heard a new party called Accion Por La Justicia is soon to be launched.
May 16th, 2024 at 6:04 am
Bush Immigration Speech Doesn’t Satisfy Critics
As might have been expected, President Bush’s speech last night on immigration reform, trying to outline a middle ground between the “build a wall and export all the Wetbacks” school and “bring us your poor … huddled masse…
May 16th, 2024 at 7:01 am
He was talking out of both sides of his mouth.
May 16th, 2024 at 8:17 am
[...] in the US requires the learning of English. On balance, it was a fairly moderate speech. I continue to find the deployment of thousands of National Guard troops to be problematic. And, in general, I [...]