Decision Points

the issue in 2005. That is more than we spent on the war in Iraq, Medicare modernization, and the Troubled Asset Relief Program combined. For anyone concerned about the deficits facing future generations, the failure to reform Social Security ranks among the most expensive missed opportunities of modern times.

    She was standing on the doorstep, alone in the rain. She looked tired and scared. A few days earlier, Paula Rendón had said goodbye to her family in Mexico and boarded a bus bound for Houston. She arrived with no money and no friends. All she had was an address, 5525 Briar Drive, and the names of her new employers, George and Barbara Bush.
    I was thirteen years old when I opened the door that evening in 1959. Before long, Paula became like a second mother to my younger brothers and sister and me. She worked hard, taking care of our family in Texas and her own in Mexico. Eventually she bought a home and moved her family to Houston. She always says the proudest day of her life came when she saw her grandson graduate from college. As governor and president, I had Paula in mind when I spoke about immigration reform . “Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande,” I said.
    Like Paula, most who left Mexico for the United States came to put food on the table for their families. Many worked backbreaking jobs, picking crops in the field or laying tar on roofs under the Texas sun. Some, like Paula, received permanent work visas. Others came as temporary workers through the Bracero Program . Some crossed the border illegally.
    Over the next four decades, the size of America’s economy expanded from under $3 trillion to more than $10 trillion. The need for workers skyrocketed. Yet immigration and employment laws were slow to change. The Bracero Program expired in 1964 and was not replaced. Thesupply of permanent work visas did not rise anywhere near as fast as the demand for labor. With no practical way to enter the country lawfully, increasing numbers of immigrants came illegally.
    An underground industry of document forgers and smugglers, known as coyotes, sprang up along the border. They stuffed people in the trunks of cars or left them to walk miles across the searing desert. The number of deaths was appalling. Yet immigrants, many of them determined to feed their families, kept coming.
    By the time I ran for president, illegal immigration was a serious problem and getting worse. Our economy needed workers, but our laws were being undermined and human rights were being violated. In my 2000 campaign, I decided to take on the issue. I was confident we could find a rational solution that served our national interests and upheld our values.
    My first partner on immigration reform was President Vicente Fox of Mexico. Vicente and his wife, Marta, were our guests at the first state dinner Laura and I held, on September 5, 2001. I discussed the possibility of creating a temporary worker program that would allow Mexicans to enter the United States lawfully to work a specific job for a fixed period of time. Vicente supported the idea, but he wanted more. He hoped America would legalize all Mexicans in the United States, a policy he called regularization. I made clear that would not happen. I believed amnesty—making illegal immigrants automatic citizens—would undercut the rule of law and encourage further illegal immigration.
    Then 9/11 hit, and my most serious concern was that terrorists would slip into our country undetected. I put the idea of a temporary worker program on hold and concentrated on border security. In the four years after 9/11, we worked with Congress to increase funding for border protection by 60 percent, hired more than nineteen hundred new Border Patrol agents, and installed new technology, such as infrared cameras.
    In October 2005, I signed a homeland security bill providing an additional $7.5 billion for border enforcement. The bill deepened our investment in technology and intelligence infrastructure at the border. It also funded an increase in bed space at federal detention facilities near the border, which allowed officials to stop letting the illegal immigrantsthey arrested return to society—a frustrating practice known as catch and release.
    I hoped our focus on security would reassure the American people that we were serious about stopping illegal immigrants from entering the country. But defensive measures alone would not solve the problem. America’s economy was a magnet for the