Former President George W. Bush said Thursday that White evangelical churches have become too political, as he called for lowering the volume of the immigration debate and focusing on the humanity of migrants themselves.

View Comments (4)

Mr. Bush, who has gone from president to painter in his retirement, is promoting his new book of portraits of immigrants, which he says should remind those engaged in the political battle over the issue of the kinds of people whose lives are at stake in the debate.

Democrats have seized on the former president’s work as a rebuke to the Trump era, and indeed Mr. Bush said he considered President Trump’s election loss last year a statement of voters wanted “a better tone” in politics.

But Mr. Bush also said border security and tighter asylum checks must be part of any immigration solution, and he dismissed President Biden’s idea of a broad bill to offer legal status to the entire undocumented immigrant population. . . .

He said “Dreamers” are a good starting point, with most Americans finding them — who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children by their parents — the most sympathetic population among the 11 million.

Mr. Bush also revealed that he himself employs Mexican guest-workers on a tree farm business. He said eight people come every year under the H-2B visa program, helping keep the operation afloat. . . .

Mr. Bush was speaking at an event sponsored by the Bush Center in Dallas. It was moderated by Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s ethics & religious liberty commission, who wondered why some religious adherents’ support for immigration in the U.S. has flagged in recent years.

The former president responded by wondering whether some denominations themselves haven’t strayed too far.

“Are our churches too political? Are they focused on the right mission, which is saving souls?” he said. “Churches have become, particularly the White evangelical churches, have become political instruments.” . . .

Eleven states had questions about marriage on their ballots that year, including Ohio, the crucial state in the Electoral College where Mr. Bush’s campaign said it benefited from Christian turnout. . . .

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks derailed his efforts, but he returned to the issue in his second term, backing broad legalization bills taken up by the Senate in 2006 and 2007. The first of those cleared the Senate, but the House was moving the other direction, passing a major immigration enforcement bill. Both measures died.

In 2007, with the Bush administration actively helping craft the legislation, senators couldn’t even pass their own bill, as liberal Democrats joined with conservative Republicans to blow up the compromise.

The divide has in many ways grown deeper. Republicans insist that border security and enforcement must be shored up before legalization happens, even as Democrats reject security measures they long supported and call for an expanding size of legalization. . . .

Alfonso Aguilar, who worked at Homeland Security in the Bush administration and now runs the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, said Mr. Bush is sounding the same policies he supported while in office — particularly the need to match willing foreign workers with open jobs, but also the goal of coupling a legalization with stiffer border security. . . .

But he said the enforcement aspect of Mr. Bush’s message is not getting enough attention, as Democrats use the former president’s other comments to hammer Republicans. . . .

Mr. Bush, in several interviews over the last week suggested he may have helped feed the divide by his strategy during his presidency.

He said he campaigned on both an immigration overhaul and revamping Social Security in 2004, and after he won reelection he went for Social Security first. It tanked, and he now says he wishes he’d gone for immigration instead, figuring he had a chance to succeed there.

But Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said Mr. Bush wouldn’t have had any better success in 2005 than he did in 2007. . . .

Like Mr. Aguilar, Mr. Krikorian doubted the former president is winning converts. . . .

Share your comments below on Bush’s speech?

(Excerpt from The Washington Times. Article by Stephen Dinan. Photo Credit: Getty Images.)