NYT: President's Middle Path Disappoints Both Sides of...Immigration Issue

[tuvor]

CHICAGO, May 15 — As Jose F. watched President Bush's address from an apartment on this city's Northwest side, he shook his head fiercely at moments: at the prospect of tamper-proof identification cards for legal workers, at the many mentions of increased border security, and at what he saw, in the end, as uncertainty of the future Mr. Bush intended for illegal immigrants like himself.

"I worry about the militarization and whether this will mean more deaths on the border," said Jose F., 27, who sneaked in from Mexico nearly eight years ago and who asked that his last name not be used because he feared losing his job at a social services agency, deportation or both. "And identification cards will only make it harder to survive, and people will have to go further underground and work for cash."

In Houston, meanwhile, Louise Whiteford watched the president with equal skepticism. Ms. Whiteford, president of Texans for Immigration Reform, a group opposed to illegal immigration and founded in 1999, swiftly took issue with several of Mr. Bush's promises and accomplishments, including an increase in the Border Patrol to 12,000 agents from 9,000 since his administration took over.

"This is very inadequate," Ms. Whiteford, 76, said. "That's about the number of police in Fort Worth and Dallas." When the president said he planned to add 6,000 more by 2008, she shook her head, noting, "That's too long."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/us/16react.html?hp&ex=1147838400&en=426293d44951e52a&ei=5094&partner=homepage