Top conservative leaders have written President Bush telling him to drop his insistence on a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship for illegal aliens and instead support the 85 percent of congressional Republicans who want to tighten law enforcement first. Signers include William J. Bennett, Robert H. Bork, Ward Connerly, David A. Keene, Phyllis Schlafly and a number of think-tank academics and pundits.
The immigration debate is the first major issue on which Mr. Bush finds himself opposing a majority of Republicans in Congress and depending on Democrats to deliver a victory. In their letter, the conservatives tell Mr. Bush to side with his fellow Republicans in Congress or risk repeating the 1986 immigration law that promised enforcement and amnesty but delivered only the amnesty.
"Border and interior enforcement must be funded, operational, implemented and proven successful and only then can we debate the status of current illegal immigrants or the need for new guest-worker programs," 39 conservative leaders write in the letter, to be released today. A copy was obtained yesterday by The Washington Times. The letter was addressed as well to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee.
Across the House and Senate, 85 percent of Republicans voted either for the House bill, which is an enforcement-only bill, or against the Senate bill, which dramatically increases immigration and offers a new right to citizenship for illegal aliens.
"That's pretty overwhelming among congressional Republicans. That shows a distance from [Senate bill sponsors Sens. John McCain and Edward M. Kennedy] and what the White House has been saying recently," John Fonte, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who is helping organize the letter, said in an interview.
