Agreeing with Mr. Bush, I too might rather be right than be president. Wait? He is president.

As I commented in the blog Catholic Analysis, I think really there is poetry and economic truth in the statement that, in this issue, jobs are created not destroyed. To me, who votes conservative typically, the May Day March was disturbing. I doubt that it was lost on the marchers that this was the traditional day for marches of communist armies. There certainly were the pictures of Che Guevara, the references to an oppressive America, this was 'their country,' so rules of citizenship were invalid philosophically etc. As one commenter said, 'the American flags were all new' (not evidence of an enduring interest). It seems naive to me to talk about protecting the border and view this as a problem of practical geometry. Responding to a criticism from a caller at a radio station, the Dallas mayor said this week that 25 years ago the local police on making a stop for some reason, would look into someone's immigration status if that seemed appropriate, no longer. If once you get 100 miles inland, 'there are no illegal aliens' as it says on the poster, then part of what you have done is emphasize smuggling, which of course has also terrorist implications, at the border. You still have no appropriate relationship with 12 (?) million people here. I think the problem for our country is that those who are for order, if you will, are also too niggardly with the allowed numbers for immigration or guest worker status. After all, there is 4.7% unemployment here but our official standard for entry would have had us with 12 million less individuals, who as a group have the highest labor participation rate. On the other hand the leaders of the immigrants, supported by them, apparently are communists who would destroy property rights, contracts and life as Castro, Chavez and Morales from Hispanic cultures do.

A blog, conservative in their lights, which has been kind enough to keep up with me, offers that a Zogby poll says that Americans 2 to 1 prefer the House immigration bill version to the Senate, prefer enforcement to guest worker status being granted. That's nice, and if that is the democratic decision, like William Faulkner, I know which side I'm on; but it may be a significant boon to Muslim jihadists who will see us then engaged in a 2 front war. Tongue in cheek, I see the Senate moving to an alternative to capital punishment. It has provisions for citizenship track status if you have been 2-5 years in the country. Can you imagine working for the INS and having someone sitting in front of you presenting WalMart receipts from 5 years ago, and you are asked to decide, 'Are these for this person? Are they real or are they fake?' Wash and repeat 25 times a day. A few days of that and you might wonder whether lethal injection wouldn't have been better. So there certainly is something to disagree with in the Senate version even though it touches on a guest worker status other than that status itself. A carrot and stick approach I think is appropriate. The carrot, guest worker status period, that's really what the illegales sought; the stick, DHS, and perhaps other, raids and deportation if not documented.

Update: Mike Pence (R-Indiana) has a bill pretty much like the above. I like it's feature of no limit on guest workers for the first 3 years.