Bush toughens immigration stance

The new approach was evident as the US leader made an appearance Wednesday at a coffee shop in Alexandria, Virginia, touting enforcement measures meant to catch illegal immigrants when they try to apply for work.

"Part of a comprehensive immigration plan is to give employers the tools necessary to determine whether or not the workers they're looking for are here legally in America," the US president said, flanked by immigrant workers from Iran, Guatemala and El Salvador.

"Part of a comprehensive immigration plan is to ... say to employers, 'It's against the law for you to hire somebody here illegally. We intend to find you when we catch you doing it,'" the president said.

Bush plugged his administration's "Basic Pilot" initiative, a voluntary, online verification system allowing employers to check an applicant's immigration status against federal databases. The president called for making the program mandatory.

But he also stressed the importance of making it easier for employers to legally hire foreign-born workers "for jobs Americans aren't doing."

Long-time Washington observer Stephen Hess said it was an adroit mid-course correction by the US president, whose earlier immigration reform proposals had focused mostly on measures that would normalize the status illegal workers.

"This bill was dead as a doornail -- at least through the election and into November. The president has revived it," said Hess, from the Brookings Institution think tank.

The change may have saved a immigration bill that for weeks had been hopelessly stymied, political observers said, and could also help reconcile seemingly intractable differences between House and Senate immigration bills.

The House of Representatives bill passed late last year would deport undocumented immigrants and build 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) of fence on the Mexican border.

Legislation approved this year by the Senate however, also would put key enforcment measures in place, but include channels for immigrants to gain legal status. Its provision would allow many of the estimated 11.5 million foreign workers here illegally, many of them Mexican, to gain legal status.

The rift had made adversaries of many within the Republican party, which normally prides itself on its discipline and unity.

"This could well have been a fight between Republicans and Democrats. It happened to be, interestingly enough, a fight between Republicans and Republicans," Hess said.

If the president succeeds in moving the debate forward, it can only help Republicans at the polls in November Hess said. But political analyst Thomas Mann, also from Brookings, said the maneuver also could backfire.

"Bush appears to have elevated the importance of this Novembers election over that of the long-term interests of the Republican party," said Mann, who added that a crackdown on mostly-Hispanic illegal workers could cost him with those voters.

"His shift of position may help marginally but at a steep prices with Latinos in future elections," Mann said.

Immigration reform not only was on the president's agenda, but was the topic of off-site congressional hearings Wednesday by the US House in San Diego and the US Senate in Philadelphia.

The star witness at a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee, New York's Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg, lobbied strenuously for a break for illegal immigrants, who he said help prop up the city's economy.

"We need to get real about the people who are now living in this country ilegally, in many cases raising families and paying taxes," the billionaire businessman-turned-politician told lawmakers.

"The idea of deporting 11 or 12 million people -- about as many as live in the entire state of Pennsylvania -- is pure fantasy," he said.

"The economic consequences would be devastating to this country," the New York Mayor said, adding that the only practical solution is to "offer those already here the opportunity to earn permanent status and keep their families together."

"Instead of pointing figures about the past, let's accept the present for what it is, by bringing people out of the shadows," Bloomberg said.

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