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Do we need a guest worker program?: No

It will spur illegal migration and discourage business innovation

BY MARK KRIKORIAN

A number of guest-worker programs now under consideration would import millions of new foreign workers. Establishing any of them would be an enormous mistake.

It's important to distinguish between illegal-alien amnesty and a true guest-worker, or temporary-worker, program. Relabeling illegals as guests to launder their status doesn't hide that it's amnesty.

Even a true program for guest workers, far from being the solution to our immigration problems, is a dead end morally and practically. These programs are based on the immoral idea that workers are not human. As Theodore Roosevelt once said, "Never under any condition should this nation look at an immigrant as primarily a labor unit." This mistake has been used to rationalize the importation of captive labor, whether as indentured servants, African slaves, Chinese coolies or Mexican braceros.

Every guest worker program - everywhere - has failed, for three reasons. First, they result in large-scale permanent settlement. Germany ended its Turkish guest worker program in 1973, and not only did the "temporary" workers not return home, they brought their families to join them, causing the immigrant population to double.

Second, the programs spark illegal immigration. Our Mexican immigrant population (almost all once illegal aliens) is 18 times bigger than it was in 1960 because our last big guest-worker scheme, FDR's Bracero Program, produced illegal immigration flows we're still facing today.

Finally, the flooding of the low-skilled labor market with foreign workers distorts the industries involved, taking away the incentive for labor-saving innovations that lead to greater productivity.

There is no economic need for foreign workers, but even if there were, another servile labor program would not be the answer. If we make the wrong choice, the consequences will echo for generations.

Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Originally published on March 25, 2006