In a gesture so mendacious that it gives a whole new meaning to the notion of “transparency in government”, President Bush will tonight unveil a plan to place National Guard troops on the US border with Mexico. White House aides spent the weekend busily prepping journalists for the President’s speech. Three talking points have emerged:

• The President will announce plans to send several thousand National Guard troops to the border, ostensibly to shore up Border Patrol efforts and reduce the flow of illegals crossing into the country. Anyone concerned that National Guard units, already stretched to the breaking point in Iraq, are not up to the job can rest assured. Yesterday, Bush told a “worried” Vicente Fox that the Guard’s presence on the border would be only temporary -- the time it takes, no doubt, to push his amnesty legislation through Congress.

• The President will promise to ratchet up workplace enforcement, cracking down on those who employ illegal labor. That won’t be hard: under Bush’s leadership, workplace enforcement has plummeted to nearly zero. In coming weeks, expect a flurry of high profile round-ups and then, just as suddenly, a return to business as usual. Here, again, timing is everything.

• The President will once again tout the Senate version of his wildly unpopular “guest worker” amnesty. Viewer discretion is advised: you can count on Bush to recycle all of the unsavory and insulting platitudes with which he has addressed the issue from the start of his administration.

Anyone out there who is still prepared to grant Bush a shred of credibility on immigration should consider the following:

• That, since taking office, the Bush administration and its appointees at the Department of Homeland Security have consistently sabotaged efforts to deal with illegal immigration: killing successful interior enforcement efforts, failing to meet promised Border Patrol hiring and funding objectives, turning a blind eye to Mexican government meddling in America’s internal affairs and, perhaps most spectacularly of all, reversing the Clinton administration’s already shamefully modest efforts to guarantee workplace enforcement.

  Don't be fooled: Bush has no intention of cleaning up the mess at the border.

• That all of this has been done despite strong voter opposition to current immigration “policy” and with complete disregard for its consequences for a whole array of pressing public issues: the threat to national security, rapid population growth and demographic transformation, downward pressure on native born wages, the burgeoning illegal alien crime wave, deteriorating public services and increasing tax-payer burden and, last but not least, the prospects of all this for social solidarity and national identity in the 21st-century.

  Driven by a post-national vision and a large dose of personal vanity, Bush doesn’t care about the consequences for American citizens.

• Bush’s plan, meanwhile, will only aggravate an already unmanageable situation. By regularizing the status of the 10 to 20 million illegals presently residing in the country, the legislation presently before the Senate will simply serve as an incentive to yet more illegal immigration, sending a green light to a new wave of would-be border crossers at the same time it gives unscrupulous employers a new incentive to underbid the market.

  Far from ending the black market in illegal labor, Bush’s plan will simply create a parallel market of semi-legal guest workers. Both will compete with Americans for jobs.

Bush’s plans for amnesty have already cost him dearly in public opinion polls and are set to cost the Republican Party even more at the next election. But it should be clear that the issues at stake here exceed run-of-the-mill politics.

However things go in coming weeks, this is a decisive moment for the country. Bush’s reckless support for amnesty has cost him but it is a price he’s willing to pay. I suspect that most Americans are not. If we wish to keep our country, we had better start showing it. Call your representatives and tell them what you think. Support the House of Representatives' enforcement-only legislation; reject the Senate's "guestworker" amnesty sell-out.

Contact your Senators here: 866-220-0044/ 888-355-3588/ 866-340-9281 (toll free numbers)

Contact your Congressmen here: 866-220-0044/ 888-355-3588/ 866-340-9281 (toll free numbers)