Give us your tired, your poor, your illegal

This proposal Bush laid is out the most abhorrently motivated bits I have ever witnessed. It makes Grey Davis and the driver's license manuever look almost comprehensible. If I'm reading the basic concepts he outlined in his speech yesterday, it goes something like this:

ILLEGAL (UNDOCUMENTED) IMMIGRANTS (WORKERS)
If you're here illegally, but can document that you have a job, you can apply for a permit which will allow you to remain here for three years as long as you maintain your employment, pay your taxes, attend weekly religious services, yadda, yadda, yadda. When the three year period expires, you may renew--one time only!--your permit. After that, we don't know.

FELONIOUS TAX CHEATS (EMPLOYERS)
If your workforce has any member(s) of the above cohort, you will provide the employee documented proof of his/her employment status. This documentation, detailing the employee's position, tenure, salary, et. al., will be filed with the federal government. It will require you to renumirate said employee under the laws and statutes established by the federal government and your local state, city and municipal governments. If said employee's employment is terminated, you may be required by law to inform the federal department supervising this program.

Yowza! That's one hell of a deal now, idn't it?

If your a member of the first group, you are relatively assured that the INS will not be busting your ass back to where you came from anytime soon, but the Feds will know where you are and what you better damn well be doing or else the INS gets sicced on you!

If you belong to the latter group, you are relatively assured that your operating costs will explode and your tax liabilities--future, present and especially past--will become onerous and open to IRS scrutiny. You will become a de-facto contractor to the Feds, operating as their representative in maintaining the intergrity of this program by monitoring your employee and informing the authorities if the employee's status changes or we unleash the IRS beasties to feed on your ass till it shits nickels.

Oh, fun!

Does Karl Rove really think this is gonna get him Hispanic votes? It didn't work for Davis in the recall. Further, can ANYBODY tell me where the hell the upside of this scam is supposed to reside for either party involved? If I'm an illegal, I risk maybe getting deported, probably getting fired, definitely placed on the goverment's radar. If I'm the employer, I just lost a hunk of my profits, had my operating costs and payroll expanded, and maybe spend the next ten years getting reamed by the IRS for all my off-the-books shenanigans from years past if I don't go along with this.

Oh, Yeah! Sign me up!

What galls me is rationalizations of this by Bush defenders as the only pragmatic option available. BUNK! (and Sully, your choice of Money Quote is bathetic.)

You need cheap labor? Call your local prison warden. He's got warm bodies piled high in his pen. Hell, the states use 'em to pound out license plates; why can't Perdue use them to pluck chickens and shovel shit?