President to speak on immigration

President Bush can expect a warm welcome when he speaks about immigration reform in Irvine on Monday, with some of his biggest critics on that topic expected to stay away.

Bush has been in California since Friday, with visits planned to various cities to meet with technology executives, Marines and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

He’ll speak about immigration Monday to the Orange County Business Council, its invited guests and media. It is not known how many people are expected, because a spokesman for the business council did not return repeated calls for information on Friday.

One notable absence will be Huntington Beach Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who said Friday he’s not going “as a matter of courtesy” to the president.

Bush has advocated a guest worker program while Rohrabacher has vocally opposed it.

“He is proposing measures that will make it worse, not make it better,” Rohrabacher said. “All of his suggestions, whether they call it guest worker programs or whatever, include the provisions to normalize ? an illegal’s status. You can spell it any way you want ? it’s amnesty.”

Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor, who has been in the national spotlight for proposing that his city’s police be the first to be trained for immigration enforcement, on Friday was noncommittal about attending the talk.

“I may or may not,” he said. “I’m sure it’s going to be very crowded.”

Mansoor said the president hasn’t done enough to enforce existing immigration laws.

“The border clearly needs to be secured,” he said.

Newport Beach Rep. John Campbell ? whose district includes Irvine ? plans to see Bush speak, though he thinks tougher enforcement should come before any more legal immigration is allowed.

“A guest worker program is a restricted form of immigration. If you can’t enforce the restrictions, what’s the point of them,” Campbell said. “If I get the chance to say something to him, that’s what I’ll say.”

Business leaders will likely be more favorable to the president. In recent speeches, he has proposed a program that boosts border security, increases enforcement of existing immigration laws inside the U.S., and creates a guest worker program.

Bush’s plan reaches a middle ground between some of the more extreme positions legislators have taken, said Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce President Ed Fawcett. He will not be attending Monday’s event.

“A guest worker program has worked in the past, can work, and if reasonably implemented, can provide a solution to the need for workers,” Fawcett said. The president’s plan “is a more moderate and realistic and real solution.”

It’s not clear why the president decided to come to Orange County, but UC Irvine political science professor Mark Petracca credits him with the courage to take on an explosive issue.

“Of course, he’s going to have a reasonably supportive audience,” Petracca said. “It’s not so courageous to come and talk to a group of business people who probably, like the president, are aware of the positive role that immigrant labor plays in the well-being of this economy.”

An ulterior motive could be to silently remind Orange County Republican stalwarts that although their legislative seats are safe, their campaign donations will help the GOP elsewhere, Petracca said.

Immigration activists have held regular demonstrations in Costa Mesa and around Southern California to oppose Costa Mesa’s immigration enforcement plan as well as proposed federal legislation.

Several immigrant rights activists said Friday that they weren’t aware any demonstrations in connection with Bush’s visit, and a spokesman for the Minuteman Project said that group likely wouldn’t protest Monday.

But Minuteman Project Executive Director Stephen Eichler had nothing but harsh words for Bush, who he said already has “proven his colors” on immigration by doing nothing.

“He’s coming here to try to somehow put his finger in the dam so he doesn’t have a flood of angry voters,” Eichler said.