President George W. Bush said Monday night he would order as many as 6,000 National Guard troops to secure the U.S. border with Mexico and urged Congress to give millions of illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship, as he tried to build support for a major overhaul of the nation's tattered immigration laws. "We do not yet have full control of the border and I am determined to change that," the president said in pressing for his $1.9 billion plan in a 17-minute prime-time address from the Oval Office, according to a report of the Associated Press. Bush gave strong support to a plan that would give many of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States an eventual path to possible citizenship — a move derided by some conservatives in his own Republican Party as amnesty. He rejected that term. "It is neither wise nor realistic to round up millions of people, many with deep roots in the United States and send them across the border," he said. "There is a rational middle ground between granting an automatic path to citizenship for every illegal immigrant and a program of mass deportation." The Guard troops would mostly serve two-week stints before rotating out of the assignment, so keeping the force level at 6,000 over the course of a year could require up to 156,000 troops. Still, Bush insisted, "The United States is not going to militarize the southern border."
