A Guest Worker Program Is A Bad Idea

by John Hawkins | May 17, 2006 5:36 pm

In 2004, the Democrats hammered away relentlessly at George Bush because the country lost jobs after the economic downturn caused the recession and 9/11. Another hot issue that had people all up in arms was companies moving overseas. Remember Kerry’s comments about “Benedict Arnold” companies?

Then there was outsourcing. So let me get this straight: outsourcing jobs to foreign countries is supposed to be a bad thing — at least that seemed to be the general consensus among politicians. But, bringing foreigners into the United States, where they fill up our prisons, hospital emergency rooms, and schools while American taxpayers pick up the tab is supposed to be a good idea? Although I can see how someone who supports outsourcing could be against a guest worker program, it’s hard to see how someone who opposes outsourcing could be for a guest worker progam.

Anyway, the general idea is that politicians pay a lot of lip service to how important jobs are in this country.

Yet now, in 2006, we have RINOS, liberals, & The President who are all openly advocating taking away jobs from Americans, mostly poor Americans, so they can be given to foreigners via a guest worker program.

Of course, a lot of conservatives and even a few liberals, aren’t going along with the program[1]:

“Seldom do California’s liberal Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and Alabama’s conservative Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions agree on anything. But they joined Tuesday in a failed attempt to kill the guest worker provision of the Senate’s broad overhaul of U.S. immigration law, calling it a threat to U.S. workers.

Their 69-28 defeat — one of a sequence of amendment battles that backers of the Senate bill won handily — demonstrated a powerful momentum behind the underlying legislation. Senators on both sides said President Bush’s push for the bill in a prime-time speech Monday night, in which he called for National Guard troops at the Mexican border, had aided its prospects.

…The emotional Senate debate Tuesday threw a spotlight on the deep fractures the immigration issue opens in both parties, the strange and fragile alliances it forges and the conundrums posed by any attempt to control the flow of human beings over national boundaries.

Those alliances included the call by Boxer and Sessions to kill a proposed guest worker program that would provide temporary visas for future immigrants with jobs in the United States.

“There are 3.6 million workers in construction with an average wage of $18.21,” Boxer said. “I meet with my working people in California. They’re fighting hard for these jobs, they want more of these jobs, not less of these jobs, and the last thing they want is a guest worker program that is going to provide a big pool of workers who will get far less than this amount and take jobs away from my people.”

“There is nothing temporary about this guest worker program,” agreed Sessions, saying the bill offers new migrants — as well as most of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in the country — a path to citizenship, leading to extraordinary new numbers of blue-collar migrants.

…Feinstein and Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., prevailed 79-18 on an amendment to reduce the number of low-skill guest worker visas from 325,000 a year to 200,000 and to remove an automatic escalator that would have increased the low-skill visas by 20 percent each year that the ceiling was reached”

So jobs paying $18.21 an hour are now supposed to be some of those infamous “job Americans won’t do?” Isn’t the real truth that companies really don’t want to pay those wages and would rather bring illegals in so they can pay them less money than they would have to pay Americans?

Of course, this is a gross oversimplification because of the way the market works, but if we bring in 200,000 guest workers for 10 years, isn’t the message that we’re sending, “We believe American citizens don’t need those 2 million jobs?”

The truth is that we don’t need a guest worker program or the illegal aliens that are here now and the country as a whole would be better off without them. Keep in mind that we’re talking about mostly uneducated people who do manual labor for relatively low wages and therefore, as they become citizens, they’ll start to use up much more in government services than they contribute back to the economy. Incidentally, illegals are already a net drain on the economy[2], it’ll just get considerably worse if and when they become Americans.

So since we’ve already got plenty of poor people in this country, why do we need to import more poverty? Moreover, why do we want to bring in hordes of new people who are actually going to make life harder for poor Americans by competing with them for jobs and driving down their wages? Heck, why should we be willing to expand the deficit by tens of billions of dollars every year in government service payouts just to provide cheap labor for crooked businesses and more votes for the Democrats?

A guest worker program is a bad idea, but a guest worker program with a path to citizenship would be much worse. Let’s hope that if a bill gets out of the Senate, the House will stand firm against a guest worker program.

Endnotes:
  1. aren’t going along with the program: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/17/MNGIIIT7VA1.DTL
  2. already a net drain on the economy: https://rightwingnews1.wpenginepowered.com/category.php?ent=5455

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