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US President George W. Bush sought Saturday to woo back his disenchanted conservative allies as he admitted having a problem with "too many illegal immigrants," but he also revived his pitch for a guest worker programme favoured by corporations.
A promise to "enforce our borders" came as Bush finds himself under fire from his own allies over his nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, the administration's profligate spending, and failure to stem the flow of illegal migrants over the southern border.
Moving to close the rift on at least one of these issues, the president assured in his weekly radio address that his administration wanted "to stop people from crossing into America illegally."
"Our border patrol and immigration agents are doing a fine job, but we still have a problem," Bush said. "Too many illegal immigrants are coming in, and we're capturing many more non-Mexican illegal immigrants than we can send home."
The president pointed out that since 2001 his administration had removed more than 4.8 million illegal immigrants from the United States, including more than 300,000 with criminal records, and was determined to step up the removal programme.
He assured that a 32-billion-dollar homeland security bill he signed into law Tuesday would help solve the problem by allocating 2.3 billion for hiring 1,000 new border patrol agents, installing and improving fencing, lighting and roads along border areas.
Bush also expressed dismay at the practice of releasing non-Mexicans caught entering the country illegally until their immigration court appearance, a summons that most of the aliens choose to ignore.
"This is called 'catch-and-release,' and it is unacceptable," the president stated firmly.
He insisted that under the bill, the holding capacity of immigration detention centers will increase 10 percent, allowing the government to keep behind bars more people slated for deportation.
But Bush also revived his push for a guest worker programme for Mexicans and other foreigners seeking work that was initially unveiled last year but shifted to the back burner under heavy criticism from conservative groups.
The 2004 plan would allow illegal aliens to get work visas for three years, but they would have to return to their home countries, if they wanted a three-year extension.
Bush stopped short of providing an outline of his guest worker redux favoured by the business community hungry for more construction workers and farm hands.
"I'll work with members of Congress to create a programme that will provide for our economy's labour needs without harming American workers, and without granting amnesty, and that will relieve pressure on our borders," he assured.
But conservatives did not appear to feel any better about the repackaged proposal than they felt about last year's.
Republican Representative Tom Tancredo said when the guest worker programme resurfaced last week that "the administrations continued kow-towing to big business" defied political sense.
"Slowly, the president's team is coming to realise that they have a political revolt on their hands," Tancredo pointed out. "And, its no longer just the conservative base that's angry about illegal immigration - theres widespread discontent about our broken system from coast to coast, from left to right."

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2005

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