Thread: No guest worker plan...

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns ... 77148.html

No guest worker plan
Nov 30, 2005
by Terence Jeffrey

The immigration-reform speech President Bush delivered this week raises the question of whether he will hold the security of our borders hostage until Congress enacts what he calls a "temporary worker" program.

Speaking in Arizona more than four years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Bush proposed a series of long-overdue measures designed to prevent masses of unknown persons from swarming across our frontiers and living in our country, illegally, with impunity. "Securing our border is essential to securing the homeland," he said -- leaving one to wonder why he waited so long to make it a priority.

But Bush also used the speech to resurrect his guest-worker plan, claiming "we will not be able to effectively enforce our immigration laws until we create a temporary worker program."

The basic terms have now been set for what could be a disastrous legislative compromise: The president at last secures our borders, but only after Congress has agreed to legalize a system that allows U.S. employers to hire foreign laborers who would be compelled by law to work for lower wages than any American would accept for the same work.

Congress should tell Bush: no deal. It should craft an immigration reform that both secures our borders and preserves our core values of free enterprise and free labor.


For the sake of argument, grant the president his implausible claim that his plan is not an "amnesty." ("Workers would be able to register for legal status for a fixed period of time, and then be required to go home," Bush said.) But even if all guest workers were sent home in exchange for new guest workers at the end of their terms, the system would still be a particularly destructive form of corporate welfare, creating a federally enforced underclass of low-wage workers whose employers would almost certainly pass on to U.S. taxpayers the bulk of whatever health-care, education and criminal-justice-system costs these guest workers and their children might incur.

"This program would create a legal way to match willing foreign workers with willing American employers to fill jobs that Americans will not do," Bush said in Arizona.

But are there honest jobs Americans truly won't do? Under Bush's plan, for example, if it cost a restaurant chain $10 an hour to persuade an American to mop its floors, the chain could simply offer the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour and, when no Americans applied, import guest workers at the lower wage.

Would that mean Americans won't mop?

No, it would mean the government had created a powerful incentive for employers to offer ever-lower wages to unskilled American workers.

"Illegal immigration puts pressure on our schools and hospitals," Bush said in Arizona. "I understand it strains the resources needed for law enforcement and emergency services." But Bush did not explain how converting illegal aliens into guest workers would lift the burden these workers place on public services financed by taxpayers.

Count on it: Taxpayers will continue picking up the tab. Guest workers -- required by law to earn the lowest of wages -- would not earn enough to pay it themselves. And, if employers were forced to pay all the health-care, education and other public costs incurred by guest workers, it would defeat the purpose of hiring them instead of more expensive American workers.

But the worst thing about a guest-worker program is what it would do to American freedom. The president's proposal would institutionalize a separate workforce in our country that would not enjoy the same economic rights as free citizens.

It would convert a portion of our free-market economy -- where workers and employers freely negotiate for jobs, wages, promotions and salary increases -- into an unfree economy, where "guest" workers, allowed to live in our country for as long as six years, could take only certain jobs, could work only for the lowest wages and could not be rewarded for excellence by being promoted into a higher-paying job that an American would be willing to do for the same pay.

America would no longer be a nation of unfettered opportunity for all. We would adopt a caste system.

Surely, without doing that, a Republican Congress can enact means to effectively secure our borders and punish those scofflaw employers who keep illegal aliens here by keeping them illegally in jobs.

No guest worker. Keep his poll numbers low and keep your Washington representation aware that you won't vote for them if they support it.

But Bush also used the speech to resurrect his guest-worker plan, claiming "we will not be able to effectively enforce our immigration laws until we create a temporary worker program."

Then, all I can say to the Wackident is this:

I suggest you take your limp dick, wave it one last time at 1600 Pennsy Avenue and get your ineffective two-timing traitorous ass out of our White House.

How any American can sit still for this Maniac to play his games, manipulate our representatives, stall our security, to get more immigrants, more people, more population, more foreign nationals into the United States is beyond my belief.

This allows open entry, 24/7/365 of every foreign national that "says" they want a job in the United States. The US Government can't keep up with the 1,300,000 legal immigrants that enter the United States every year as it is....we all remember....because we will never forget....that the hijackers of 9/11 were such immigrants who over-stayed their visas.

The US Government has NO INTENTION of controlling immigration or securing our borders.

This Maniac will not govern a guest worker program. He'll print zillions of "I'm a Guest Worker of the USA" badges and mail them to every third world country on the planet and let them hand them out. He'll leave bag fulls of them at the borders--"Take One, P. S. Take More In Case You Need Extras. Welcome, I am George W. Bush, the Wackiest Wackident in the history of the US and damned determined to end this country I consider BS. Americans suck, they want this and they want that, and As God Is My Witness I'm gonna shut these arrogant people down with your help. If you look under the bag, you will find a cell phone to contact all your friends and relatives and invite them in as my "guest workers". Be sure to tell them where you found the badges and my warm greeting. W"

This man is the most dangerous man in the world and he is going to end the United States.