Re: Immigration. What does "guest worker" really mean?

Barney Frank, on RealTime last week, said this about the "guest worker" program:

(paraphrasing) What the heck does "guest worker" mean, anyway? Welcome to my house, now go clean my bathroom?

I have said this during immigration debates among friends, families and coworkers over the last week.

Everyone can agree on that one thing...the concept of "guest worker" is ridiculous.

I think we can rest assured that it will be recurring phrase in gwb's primetime bilge-spewing on Monday night.

Let's get out the meme. :) MKJ

they are used up drop them off on the Mexican side of the border. They can come back when they can walk 3 days across the desert.

Brutal and authentic description. MKJ

There are, by some estimates, as many as 11 million undocumented aliens already in the US. Many people would prefer that they emerge from the black market sweatshop economy into the light of day where their presence may be recorded and their employment regulated. If the invitation we make to those 11 million is "Okay all you illegal aliens, we want you to go turn yourself into your local police precinct and, in exchange, we'll grant you a nice, long, cozy stretch in a federal prison!" incredibly, very few illegal aliens will take us up on that invitation. If you want any sort of immigration reform proposal to accomplish anything, you have to get people to agree to participate; for that to happen, the objects of your reform have to perceive that it's in their best interest to participate. The guest worker program is the carrot to entice people to participate, it's as simple as that. Without it, the illegal alien population will stay right where it is, thank you very much, business will continue as usual, and any reform legislation will be doomed to irrelevancy before it's even passed.

become voting citizens.

We need desperately to streamline the citizenship process, so that they can become full citizens, and quickly.

Otherwise, we will continue to have all the problems that you spelled out in a very clear and cogent manner.


Oh, and the obligatory, IMHO. :) MKJ

You're undoubtedly right, a path to citizenship is what immigrants really want and, personally, I think there's an argument to be made that they should be as entitled to that path as our ancestors, every last one of whom were also immigrants. But, you know as well as I do that there's a lot of resistance to anything that smacks of an amnesty, the guest worker proposal is an attempt at a compromise solution. And, to be honest, there is some merit to the observation that, the last time we conducted a legalization program back in 1986, there was a very large increase in the immigrant population produced a) by the initial pool of eligible participants, and, actually more significantly, b) when the IRCA beneficiaries naturalized five years later and suddenly became eligible to file family-based petitions on behalf of all of their family members still outside the US. Their ability to petition on behalf of relatives dramatically increased the number of immigrants who ultimately wound up here. Is that a bad thing? I don't know, I kind of go back and forth. Most days, I'd argue it's not that big a deal, the US still has a very low population density relative to most parts of the world, we have a huge economy, and despite what restrictionists say, the impact of immigrant labor on US wages and employment can only be detected using extremely skewed statistical methodologies produced, coincidentally enough, by restrictionist lobbyists. At the same time, I do kind of get the impression from the tone of Mexican government officials that they're starting to take for granted that emigration to the US is something to which they are entitled and may rely upon as a form of relief for their own poor domestic policies, and that I think is an attitude which needs to be curbed. Migration as a natural phenomenon is one thing; migration as an officially condoned solution to a country's bad management of its internal problems is not okay.