President Bush couldn’t have been clearer: his amnesty proposal for illegal immigrants with local roots and clean records is not an amnesty proposal. All he lacked was one of his famed ‘message’ backdrops printed with “Not An Amnesty.”

Immigration reform as defined by the president has three primary components: a guest worker program, conditional amnesty for qualifying illegal immigrants, and stepped up enforcement of existing laws. He proposes deploying roughly half a division of National Guard troops to back up border patrol agents until more of the latter can be trained; he proposes establishing a guest worker program that “would match willing foreign workers with willing American employers for jobs Americans are not doing;” and he proposes an amnesty program involving unspecified penalties and the acquisition of English.

Each of the proposals will find supporters among immigration reform proponents, and each will equally find vehement critics. Of the three, the deployment of troops along the border will likely be the least popular, drawing fire from those who think it unnecessary and from those who think it woefully inadequate.

The business-friendly guest worker and amnesty programs will draw support from employers who already rely heavily on immigrant labor, from their employees and from segments of the immigrant community; it will also draw howls of protest from anti-immigration forces.

Civil libertarians on both ends of the spectrum will probably object to one particular element of the guest worker program: biometric identification cards. The cards will also drive the black helicopter and Revelationist crowds into a frenzy: what’s next, microchip implants for anyone with a good tan?

The policy stands little chance of surviving Congress intact; contrarily, it’ll probably be dead in the water by tomorrow. What it may succeed in doing is turning a wedge issue in the Republican base into a stake through the heart of it. Some conservatives are already advocating impeachment proceedings against Bush should he fail to take a tough stand on immigration — does that qualify them as Bush haters, John? — and one suspects a plan that doesn’t include any rending of flesh and lifetimes in solitary won’t pass the toughness test.

In fact, as Bush administration proposals go, this is a fairly reasonable one. It doesn’t address any of the fundamental stressors that create the dynamics behind the flood of illegal immigrants — which is understandable, since a lot of them are the result of policies favored by those who enjoy calling themselves free traders — and neither does it address the problems inherent in creating what will, barring an Apollo-like effort to construct a truly functional public education system in this country, become a state-sanctioned underclass. But there again, one man’s pain is a plutocrat’s pleasure.

For anyone more or less satisfied with the immigration status quo, tonight’s speech probably guarantees it for some while longer. Those who want real reform aimed at benefiting poor Americans and immigrants aren’t any further from realizing those hopes than they were before. And for those in rabid opposition to Bush’s amnesty proposal and bloodless punitive measures: well, there’s always impeachment. Be sure to vote Democratic in November.

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