In his speech Monday evening (see text here), President Bush announced the allocation of 6,000 National Guard troops to aid the Border Patrol on the U.S.-Mexico border and called for a guest-worker program and some sort of road towards citizenship for the over 11 million undocumented immigrants living in America. The NY Times, Washington Post, Washington Times and LA Times—as well as countless other media outlets—reported on the speech. The speech’s ripples were felt in the Senate—as, the AP reports, senators “wrangle over” the issue—as well as on countless editorial pages (sorry, you’ll have to seek those out on your own as there’s too many for this blogger to read much less blog, but you can start here).What’s this mean in the long run? Well, your best bet is to sift through the editorial pages, but I’m hopeful this at least spurs on our representatives to resolve this issue and help these 11 million people find a path to a better—and legal—life. But my deeper prayer, perhaps, is that Christians will continue to talk about the issue, because it won’t go away even after the legal dust settles. We need to discuss it in our churches and on our blogs and in our homes. For more on this issue from a Christian perspective, see the list at the bottom of my previous post, Immigration in the news again.
(Image: Executive Office of the President of the United States)