George W. Bush Pops Up To Push Pathway To Citizenship For Illegal Aliens

Former President George W. Bush tried for years to overhaul the U.S. immigration system and urged the establishment of a process by which illegal aliens already in the U.S. could become citizens.

He never got it done.

But Bush, who famously said he would not interfere in his successors’ presidency, has bobbed up to the surface to once again push a pathway to citizenship.

The Republican is releasing a new book soon — “Out of Many, One: Portraits of America’s Immigrants” — and last week penned an op-ed in The Washington Post that laid out the reforms he envisions are needed to restore “people’s confidence in an immigration system that serves both our values and our interests.”

Bush said there needs to be a solution “for the millions of undocumented men and women currently living in the United States.”

Granting outright amnesty, he said, “would be fundamentally unfair to those who came legally or are still waiting their turn to become citizens.” Instead, there should be a “gradual process” that ends in legal status for aliens, as well as citizenship.

“Over the years, our instincts have always tended toward fairness and generosity. The reward has been generations of grateful, hard-working, self-reliant, patriotic Americans who came here by choice,” Bush wrote. “If we trust those instincts in the current debate, then bipartisan reform is possible. And we will again see immigration for what it is: not a problem and source of discord, but a great and defining asset of the United States.”

“[U]ndocumented immigrants should be brought out of the shadows through a gradual process in which legal residency and citizenship must be earned, as for anyone else applying for the privilege,” he said. “Requirements should include proof of work history, payment of a fine and back taxes, English proficiency and knowledge of U.S. history and civics, and a clean background check We should never forget that the desire to live in the United States — a worldwide and as powerful an aspiration as ever — is an affirmation of our country and what we stand for. Over the years, our instincts have always tended toward fairness and generosity. The reward has been generations of grateful, hard-working, self-reliant, patriotic Americans who came here by choice.

Bush called for a bipartisan effort to finally get the job done.

“The help and respect historically accorded to new arrivals is one reason so many people still aspire and wait to become Americans. So how is it that in a country more generous to new arrivals than any other, immigration policy is the source of so much rancor and ill will?” Bush wrote. “The short answer is that the issue has been exploited in ways that do little credit to either party. And no proposal on immigration will have credibility without confidence that our laws are carried out consistently and in good faith.”