U.S. Border Control

Guest worker proposal raises thorny questions

June 30, 2005

Guest worker programs may sound compassionate or necessary, but the more you look, the more you see problems. No guest worker program should be passed until these questions are answered:

1. Many illegal aliens enter the United States to work. But there is little enforcement of laws that prohibit employers from hiring them. Not a single employer was fined last year for doing so.
   If current laws are not enforced, how can we expect similar restrictions in a guest worker program to be enforced?
2. If foreign workers are allowed to bring their families with them and stay for years, why would they return home where a job, if they can find one, pays one-tenth as much?
3. Amnesty occurs when a person's crime is pardoned. Why isn't it amnesty when illegal entrants, instead of being deported for breaking our immigration laws, are allowed to stay?
   And why isn't it "amnesty plus" when they are also allowed to work and offered permanent residence and eventual citizenship?
4. Nearly every study shows that competition from cheap foreign labor displaces American workers, including legal immigrants, or depresses their wages. Rather than legalize illegal entrants, why not increase wages and make these jobs more attractive to American workers?
5. Why wouldn't a guest worker program be an open invitation to potential terrorists? They could enter the country legally, get a job and use the program as cover.
6. Guest workers do not earn enough to pay income taxes. And, if they pay Social Security taxes, at their low wages they will get back more than they paid in. They also use many government services.
   So how is a guest worker program not a net loss for American taxpayers?
7. If illegal entrants are legalized, and then sponsor others for admission, why won't this cause a dramatic increase in immigration, which is already at a record high?
8. Even if there is a guest worker program, millions of illegal entrants will continue to come across our borders to obtain government benefits, seek other jobs and gain automatic citizenship for their children born in the United States.
   On top of this, thousands more will enter illegally because they think they will be eligible for a guest worker amnesty program. So why doesn't the very prospect of such a program increase illegal immigration?
9. A guest worker program involves processing millions of applications, enforcing many more laws and regulations and monitoring thousands of employers. Doesn't this simply create another huge and expensive bureaucracy?

There are more than 10 million illegal entrants living in the United States full time, perhaps twice that many counting those who are in the country temporarily. Do we really want to take a chance on a massive guest worker program with no cap on the numbers and no sunset without learning the consequences?

What impact would such a program have on American workers, wages, social services, health-care costs, schools, taxpayers, and politics?

Guest worker programs sound good, but they only compound the already serious troubles that illegal immigration causes. We should hesitate before we leap.

Contact Lamar Smith at lamarsmith.house.gov