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Feinstein doesn't like current guest worker bills
With explosive election-year issue, she calls for slow, careful immigration reform
- Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Thursday, March 2, 2006


Washington -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in an extensive interview Wednesday that she has yet to see an immigrant guest worker plan that she could endorse as the Senate considers the first sweeping overhaul of U.S. immigration law in two decades.

Splitting with her party, the California Democrat urged a go-slow approach because half of the millions of immigrants who could be affected will wind up in California.

"I do not believe you can have a guest worker come for three years, renew it for another three years, bring their family, settle in, put children in schools, and then they're going to turn around and go back at the end of six years," Feinstein said. "It doesn't happen. They disappear. And that's the problem. That's the rub. That's the magnet."

The Senate Judiciary Committee will take up a 305-page measure today centered on a huge new guest worker plan by chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., setting off an emotional election-year debate on how to secure the border with Mexico and deal with the 11 million illegal immigrants already here.

Texas ranchers and sheriffs described to a Senate committee Wednesday a Southwest border out of control, with hair-raising stories of violent smuggling gangs terrorizing ranchers and leaving behind sick and injured immigrants to die of exposure.

"My neighbors and I are facing circumstances that can best be described as deplorable," said Lavoyger Durham, a third-generation rancher managing the El Tule ranch in South Texas 75 miles north of the Mexico border.

"We now must live with the constant possibility that we could be attacked or killed on our own properties," Durham said. He said he has found immigrants dead on his property, that he and other ranchers are fired upon, guards are held at gunpoint, and women are threatened by smugglers charging immigrants thousands of dollars to cross.

Just blocks from the U.S. Capitol, immigrant hotel workers held a rally lobbying for a guest-worker program and citizenship opportunities, insisting they work hard, pay taxes and commit no crimes.

"From my point of view, no human being is illegal," said Julio Medina, a Salvadoran who works at the San Francisco Hyatt Regency. "There is a lot of violence and killing against those who cross the border," he said, urging legal status so workers can raise their families and be treated with dignity.

"If you chase everybody out of here, it won't be the same," said Jose Mencia, a New Jersey hotel worker from Honduras. "We do the hard work in housekeeping and the kitchen. We do the hard jobs, and we do them with our heart. We come here to work hard and not to bother other people."

Powerful and conflicting currents, steered by White House mistiming and swelled by heated emotions, have pushed immigration to center stage after languishing since President Bush took office five years ago and hosted Mexican President Vicente Fox at his first state dinner, promising that "family values do not stop at the Rio Grande."

The pull of the vigorous U.S. economy, the push of a gigantic pool of eager workers from poorer countries and an immigration system that offers 5,000 slots for the millions of unskilled workers seeking them, has created an unusual political dynamic.

It has united business and unions, divided Republicans and put politicians in both parties between their desire to woo pivotal voter blocs -- Latinos, business and Catholics -- against outrage over surging illegal immigration.

Businesses want a reliable source of labor, unions see a vast pool of new members for their dwindling ranks, and religious groups want more humane policy.

The Service Employees International Union, which split with the AFL-CIO last year over declining membership, has joined with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops behind a bill by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. It would tighten border enforcement and each year provide slots for 400,000 guest workers -- those who could legally enter the country for waiting employment -- and allow those workers to apply for permanent status after six years.

This camp contends that no army of Border Patrol officers, no fleet of surveillance drones, and no Berlin Wall will stop the human tide until the laws match reality by expanding avenues to legal entry.

Opponents argue such a program is nothing short of amnesty for people who have broken the law to enter the country. They say it would only attract more immigrants.

Led by House Republican firebrand Tom Tancredo of Colorado and backed by the House Republican leadership, they pushed a bill through the House that would criminalize illegal presence in the country and crack down on border enforcement, build a huge fence along the Mexico border, greatly expand the Border Patrol, impose big fines on employers who hire illegal workers and require all U.S. workers to verify their status.

In between are a host of variations, including the Specter bill, which attempts to meld the McCain-Kennedy proposal with a harsher bill by Republican Sens. Jon Kyl of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas that would create a guest worker program but everyone now living illegally in the United States would have to go home before applying to return.

The Specter version splits the difference by not requiring workers to go home first, but requiring them to leave after six years.

The White House is standing on the sidelines, eyeing a conservative backlash against Bush's insistence on a guest worker program and potential fallout among Hispanic voters if a border crackdown is all that prevails.

"Their painstaking progress on winning Latino voters is in jeopardy because the face of the (Republican) party on this issue is Tom Tancredo," said Frank Sharry, head of the pro-immigration National Immigration Forum. "They are caught between their base and their desire to do something reasonable."

Feinstein, for her part, sits on the Judiciary Committee and is calling for tougher border enforcement. She supports more visas and a path to citizenship only for farmworkers.

"There is one industry that depends on undocumented workers, virtually in its entirety, and that's agriculture," Feinstein said.

She said she didn't really believe this until she had her staff ask every welfare office in California to put up notices to register people for farm work. "Guess what," she said. "They didn't get any, in all 58 counties."

She sympathized with workers who have lived in the United States for years and raised children, supporting legislation to legalize undocumented students who came as children if they stay in school.

She is also sponsoring a private bill to grant permanent status to the Arreola family in Fresno, headed by a former migrant farmworker and now facing deportation with five children, three of them U.S. citizens, because of mistakes by their attorney. Feinstein said the eldest daughter is a top student.

"None of this is easy," she said.

Still, "I think it's a big mistake to move a huge bill," she said. "I don't believe that guest workers are going to solve the problem because the flow never ends.

"There are plenty of American workers who want to work in hotels or construction or anywhere else," she said. "And I don't think they should be replaced with foreign guest workers."

E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at clochhead@sfchronicle.com.