Finger-pointing continues

President Bush is not letting up this week on the Senate's failure to come up with an immigration bill last week.

According to the New York Times, on Thursday, Mr. Bush accused Senator Reid of "single-handedly thwarting the will of the American people and impeding bipartisan efforts to secure this border, and make this immigration system of ours more humane and rational." (Senator Reid fired back with something about Bush having as much credibility on immigration issues as he does on security and war in Iraq...).

Reid is standing by his actions last week to twart conservative Republicans from adding radical amendments to the legislation.

The talk in the Senate now is that will try again after the recess and take a compromise bill (probably the Hagel-Martinez bill) direct to the Senate floor, bypassing any more work by the Judiciary Committee.

Sceptics in Washington think that Comprehensive Immigration Reform is dead at this point but that we'll see many of the enforcement provisions again.

Senator Bill Frist is threatening to add the enforcement provisions to up-coming must-pass appropriations this fall, right before the November elections. Along with House Representative Hastert, Frist is backing off the "criminalization" aspects of HR 4437, saying that the Democrats fought to keep it in for strategic reasons.

There's still another week of the recess to go. Sit tight for more finger-pointing.

P.S. For a good synopsis of how we got to this point, check out this article by Jean Butterfield, Executive Director of the American Immigration Lawyers' Asscociation:
http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=c5721a3d9f9384
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