President Bush vowed today to step up enforcement of U.S. immigration laws on America’s borders and inside the country, but he said this could not be done without also creating a new “temporary worker program” that would allow illegal immigrants to live and work in the United States for a defined period.

Highlights from the speech:

As a former governor, I know that enforcing the law and the border is especially important to the communities along the border. Illegal immigration puts pressure on our schools and hospitals. I understand that.

I understand it strains the resources needed for law enforcement and emergency services. And the vicious human smugglers and gangs that bring illegal immigrants across the border also bring crime to our neighborhoods and danger to the highways.

OK so if you understand all this, why are you still promoting this “temporary worker program”- that will encourage people to come to America illegally, to get jobs you’re basically putting aside for them???

Let me talk to you about a three-part plan.

The first part of the plan is to promptly return every illegal entrant we catch at the border with no exceptions. More than 85 percent of the illegal immigrants we catch are from Mexico.

And most of them are escorted back across the border within 24 hours. To prevent them from trying to cross again, we’ve launched an interesting program, an innovative approach called interior repatriation.

Under this program, many Mexicans caught at the border illegally are flown back to Mexico and then bussed to their hometowns in the interior part of the country.

I think this should continue, at Mexico’s expense. Not ours. Why are we paying for this?

We face a different set of challenges with non-Mexicans who we catch crossing the border illegally. When non-Mexican illegal immigrants are apprehended, they are initially detained. The problem is that our detention facilities don’t have enough beds, and so about four of every five non-Mexican illegal immigrants we catch are released into society and asked to return for a court date.

When the date arrives, about 75 percent of those released don’t show up to the court. As a result, last year only 30,000 of the 160,000 non-Mexicans caught coming across our southwest border were sent home.

This practice of catch and release has been the government’s policy for decades. It is an unwise policy, and we’re going to end it.

Non Mexicans?? Who cares where they’re from? If they cross over into Arizona, from Mexico, dump them back to Mexico. Thats where they came from. Again, we are paying a lot of money for this foolishness.

The second part of our plan to strengthen border enforcement is to correct weak and unnecessary provisions in our immigration laws.

Under current law, the federal government is required to release people caught crossing our border illegally if their home countries do not take them back in a set period of time.

That law doesn’t work when it comes time to enforcing the border. And it needs to be changed.

Those we are forced to release have included you had murderers, rapists, child molesters and other violent criminals. This undermines our border security. It undermines the work these good folks are doing. And the United States Congress needs to pass legislation to end these senseless rules.

Bush is right about this. Congress needs to take action.

And now for the sour grapes:

As we enforce our immigration laws, comprehensive immigration reform also requires us to improve those laws by creating a new temporary worker program.

This program would create a legal way to match willing foreign workers with willing American employers to fill jobs that Americans will not do.