We currently have six living presidents, including Joe Biden as the current president, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. Well, one of these U.S. presidents is now making some serious headlines for his recent comments, and no, believe it or not, this isn’t Donald Trump. Last Tuesday, former President George W. Bush characterized the current state of the GOP as being a “nativist” organization and something that isn’t his “vision” for what the GOP should stand for.
“I would have to describe the current state of the party as an isolationist, protectionist, and even nativist to a certain extent,” he said in an interview with Hoda Kotb on NBC’s “Today.”
“I can’t say that the current state of the GOP is my vision, but I’ll tell you something else, I’m just an old dude that they have put out in the retirement home,” he said. “Just a retired guy who has taken up painting,” he continued.
At the moment, George W. Bush is on tour promoting his new memoir, “Out of Many. One” which is a collection of paintings done by him that highlight the immigrant story. The paintings are also accompanied by text that share their stories. Bush said that his purpose for the book was to “share some of the portraits of these immigrants, and to show that many of them have a remarkable story that I am trying to tell. I am just trying to humanize the debate on this immigration and immigration reform.”
“I think that this system should be fixed and reformed,” Bush said to Kotb. Bush believes that immigrants are simply coming to the United States in search of a better life, simply because their home countries might have poverty, violence, natural disasters, and criminal dictatorships or tyranny. However, while we mostly agree with the former president, we do have to draw the line on coming the LEGAL way. Illegal immigrants are a slap in the face for all of these who PATIENTLY wait the legal way to immigrate to our wonderful country.
“There are two things I think that will alleviate this broken immigration system,” Bush continued. “One, we should have an asylum process that is as robust as possible – in other words, we should take note of the border being overwhelmed at the moment, so that means that we should have more judges, more courts and more people dedicated to this issue. We need to give people a fair hearing. Secondly, we should change these work visas. There is a tremendous amount of jobs out there and we need to fill them and so there are people working to do just that.”
Bush went on to lament the fact that both the GOP and Democrats think that they have the ability to score political points against each other on this immigration issue and he said that tends to prevent actual reforms from becoming law. All of us here at the Independent Minute would agree with him on that for sure.
“It can be an easy issue to frighten the electorate with and one of the things I’m trying to do is to have a different kind of voice,” Bush stated.
Hoda Kotb then asked Bush if there was a “hypothetical candidate who was “pro-immigration” and who supported some issues as DACA, gun control, amnesty, and increased funding for public schools would be able to win the 2024 Republican nomination, Bush replied, “Sure, they would have a shot.”
“I think if this candidate places an emphasis on decency and integrity and they are trying to work to get problems solved, then that person has a shot,” Bush said. “By the way,” he continued, “I can’t say that ‘pro-immigration’ is quite the right way to put it. I would call it ‘border enforcement with a compassionate touch’ instead. The problem with calling it ‘pro-immigration’ is that it means that we are just opening the borders up wide open. No, nobody is really for that. You can’t have a country that is for that. It does need to be reformed, however.”
What do you think about George W. Bush’s thoughts on this? Your comments are appreciated!