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Bush Calls for Border Troops, Guest Workers

Three men (see enlargement) sit on the Mexican side of the border in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, as a U.S. Border Patrol vehicle sits in El Paso, Texas, on Monday.
Three men (see enlargement) sit on the Mexican side of the border in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, as a U.S. Border Patrol vehicle sits in El Paso, Texas, on Monday.

President Bush tells the nation in televised Oval Office speech on illegal immigration that "America can be a lawful society, and a welcoming society."

The president plans to send 6,000 National Guard troops to help tighten the U.S.-Mexico border.

But he also called again for a guest-worker program to help immigrants seeking jobs in the U.S.

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You're most likely to find NPR's Don Gonyea on the road, in some battleground state looking for voters to sit with him at the local lunch spot, the VFW or union hall, at a campaign rally, or at their kitchen tables to tell him what's on their minds. Through countless such conversations over the course of the year, he gets a ground-level view of American elections. Gonyea is NPR's National Political Correspondent, a position he has held since 2010. His reports can be heard on all NPR News programs and at NPR.org. To hear his sound-rich stories is akin to riding in the passenger seat of his rental car, traveling through Iowa or South Carolina or Michigan or wherever, right along with him.