Thread: Bush guest worker plan blasted by both sides

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Bush guest worker plan blasted by both sides
Eunice Moscoso - Cox Washington Bureau
Thursday, October 20, 2005

Washington --- Groups on both sides of the immigration debate on Wednesday criticized President Bush's temporary worker plan, which would allow millions of illegal immigrants to apply for visas.

Immigrant advocates and Hispanic organizations said the plan was unworkable and could create a permanent underclass in the United States because it did not include a path to permanent residency and citizenship for the workers.

Groups that support tougher enforcement of immigration laws said the plan amounted to amnesty because it allowed illegal immigrants to stay for up to six years.

"There is no constituency for this proposal," said Cecilia Munoz, vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic civil rights group. "The business community doesn't like it. The anti-immigrant groups don't like it. . . . We don't like it."

Munoz said the plan would not work because illegal immigrants who have been in the United States for many years and who have started businesses and raised families will not sign up for a plan that would eventually force them to leave. She also said businesses don't like the plan because it would cost them trained workers every few years.

Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigrant Coalition, an umbrella group of advocacy organizations, also criticized Bush's proposal. The plan says to immigrants, "Work hard, pay taxes and then get lost. You are welcome in the lowest rung of our economy, but not in our society," he said.

On the other side of the issue, Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based think tank that supports tighter immigration enforcement, said such "guest workers" would never leave.

"History conclusively shows that the 'guests' stay long after the party is over, precisely because people are not objects, but instead have their own plan and purpose," he said. "There is nothing as permanent as a temporary worker."

Bush announced a broad outline of a temporary worker plan last year. Further details were disclosed at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday.

Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao told the panel that the plan would allow illegal immigrants and foreign workers to apply for a three-year work permit that could be renewed once, but they would have to leave the country once their visa expires.

HEREIN LIES THE TRUTH

On the other side of the issue, Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based think tank that supports tighter immigration enforcement, said such "guest workers" would never leave.

"History conclusively shows that the 'guests' stay long after the party is over, precisely because people are not objects, but instead have their own plan and purpose," he said. "There is nothing as permanent as a temporary worker."

And Private Bush knows it, yet once again, he fails to uphold the truth for the American people.

Bush's "guest worker" plan doesn't stand a chance of passing. And he admitted as much in a recent meeting with ole Presidente Foxie. He basically was trying to save face, telling Fox he did everything he could to flood America with "undocumented workers" but that that darn old Congress wasn't gonna let him get away with it.