Article claims we need imported workers

http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/app ... 70321/1020

For 2007, immigration the issue that isn't going away
With 2007 fast approaching, the holiday break from issues facing the nation -- and Congress -- will expire. Then it will be back to work on controversies left unresolved.

One of them is immigration.

At its heart is one underlying reality: There is a demand for immigrant labor in the United States -- and a need to supply it in Mexico and elsewhere -- that has to be satisfied.

If it isn't done legally, it will be done illegally.

To deny that and to seek purely law enforcement solutions that ignore economic reality is to replicate the failed "war on drugs." That badly flawed effort costs hundreds of billions of dollars a year, fills our jails, fosters corruption, feeds the criminals who fill the demand -- and fails to keep relatively cheap drugs from being widely available in almost every community in the United States.

A "war on illegal immigration" would be just as costly -- if not more so -- and just as flawed as the drug fight if its method is prohibition. The only way to beat illegal immigration is to include an effective guest worker program that fills the demand for legal immigrant labor.

Combined with increased border security and enforcement of labor laws -- including stiff fines and even jail sentences for employers who hire illegals -- the demand for illegal immigrants could be replaced with demand for legal immigrants.

If it is tough for illegals to get jobs here, they won't come. Or they will enter the legal program, which is a win-win for both sides.

Will that eliminate illegal immigration? No, but it will change the economic incentive, and that will do more than any law enforcement effort to impact the problem.

Then, instead of wasting tax dollars on another huge government administrative and police bureaucracy, we can all benefit from the economic impact of a solution that helps the economies of both the United States and Mexico.

Businesses will benefit from a program that gives them assurance they are hiring legal workers; both the local and national economies will benefit from legal workers who pay their full share of taxes and can live, work and shop openly; and the federal government can be spared the expense and turmoil of trying to root out millions of illegal workers.

Call it amnesty if you want, but allowing illegals who already work here to enter the guest worker program will give businesses a seamless way of complying with the law and defusing the need for police action.

Then, after a grace period, they would face serious penalties for employing illegals who are not in the program.

November's capture of Congress by the Democrats could lead to such a plan, given that President Bush also supports a guest worker program to meet the needs of businesses.

No country can be secure without an effective legal process for handling immigrants. But an effective program has to embrace economic reality, and work with it, not against it.

We need illegals like America needs the Plague or Aids, or the politicians that are selling our country out to criminals and invaders.

This is a bunch of bull. The only thing stopping illegal immigration is the lack of will to control it by our federal government and the greed spewing from capitalist and corporate pigs.

We could put an Army down on the border, Bush could execute orders, and companies could filter out their illegal employees..there's alot we can do, but these others have their own agendas

All they care about is the Hispanic vote. They don't care about the consequences of citizens being made ill due to contaminated food or us being victims of crime by illegals.