Unfortunately, I was unable to emerge from my book writing bunker in time to carefully watch and respond to Bush’s speech on Monday. Here are my day-late thoughts. In general, Bush’s plan to secure the border with 6,000 National Guardsmen and Guardswomen seems ineffective, ill-timed, and outright mendacious. Moreover, it left more questions in my mind than answers.

• How will 6,000 troops effectively secure the entire border given his own estimates of how many people illegally enter the country? Conservative estimates would seem to suggest five times that number in order to effectively police the border. This was probably done to appease Vicente Fox, who was promised by Bush that he would not militarize the border. In this case the presence of the troops is no more than a symbolic gesture to conservative voters who want to further criminalize Mexican immigrants. Such a move, however, obscures the more fundamental issue of job scarcity and economic underdevelopment in Mexico.

• Given the impending hurricane seasons and likely national disasters, aren’t there better uses of the National Guard? Does he think that the Katrina disaster, in which there was a disturbing paucity of available troops, was a random occurrence?

• Bush left many unaswered questions with regard to handling the estimated 11 million immmigrants who are currently in the states. While he advocated citizenship for “some of them”, it was unclear how he would make decisions about who would be awarded it, who wouldn’t, and what would happen to illegal residents as they wait.

• Lastly, I’m curious to know if most Americans will see the current immigrant conversation as a diversion from the $70 billion tax cut that was recently passed that will result in a $20 cut for the middle class and a $42,000 cut for people making more than $1 million per year.