First Door on the Left

This’ll get those right-wing tongues a-waggin’ and fingers a-typin’. If there is anything the wingnuts hate more than Mexicans and France, it’s Bill Clinton.

Clinton Praises Bush on Immigration Reform

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Former President Bill Clinton praised President Bush on Saturday for supporting reforms that would allow millions of illegal immigrants to seek citizenship but said the debate in Congress is being fomented by Republicans who want to divide America.

“I’m proud of him for doing it and I thanked him for doing it,” he said of Bush during a “Cafe con Clinton” breakfast speech to the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights advocacy group.

Clinton said Bush’s roots in Texas – which has one of the nation’s largest Hispanic populations – have helped him view immigrants as people rather than statistics.

“It’s hard to demonize people if you know them,” he said.

But Clinton also argued that the nation’s government is controlled by Republican ideological hard-liners who want to use immigration to divide Americans and distract them from issues such as the war in Iraq and the health care crisis.

Instead of equal opportunity, they support a “financial elite” because they favor “concentrated wealth and power,” Clinton said.

“They believe in a government that is secret, unaccountable and that maximizes its own power,” he said. “They really believe the world works better if they run it and we keep our mouths shut.”

Clinton supported an immigration reform measure passed by the Senate that would provide a way for many of the estimated 12 million foreigners living in the country illegally to become citizens. A House-approved bill would make illegal immigrants felons and build 700 miles of border walls. House and Senate negotiators so far have not been able to work out a compromise.