Posted on 01/23/2006 7:32:54 AM PST by devane617
Arizona business and political backers of a guest worker program for immigrants wishing to work in the U.S. are getting some top-level backing.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is teaming with top labor unions, other business interests and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in support of a guest worker program and legal way for undocumented workers already in the U.S. to stay in the country.
Arizona Sen. John McCain and Congressmen Jeff Flake and Jim Kolbe, as well as the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry, are top pushers of a controversial guest worker program.
Joining the U.S. Chamber in favor a proposal put forward by McCain, Flake, Kolbe and U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) are the Service Employees International Union, the Laborers International Union, the American, bishops group and the American Health Care Association. The Arizona state chamber also backs that guest worker effort.
Those groups do not support a more get-tough immigration package put forward by Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, both Republicans. That measure includes a guest worker program but requires the estimated 11 million illegals already in the U.S. to return to their native countries and reapply for legal status.
Kyl's rival in this year's election, Democratic real estate executive Jim Pederson, supports the McCain-Kennedy bill.
McCain-Kennedy requires illegals in the U.S. to pay a fine and undergo criminal and medical background checks and allows them to reapply for status.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) officially endorsed a guest worker program on Friday. President Bush also backs a temporary worker program.
Some other unions, however, including the AFL-CIO, worry about a large-scale guest worker program displacing U.S. jobs in favor of less expensive immigrant labor.
Other heavyweight business interests backing guest worker include the Travel Industry Association of America, Ford Motor Co., Eastman Kodak, DaimlerChrysler and the California Chamber of Commerce.
Business and unions backers of McCain-Kennedy face skepticism from conservatives who passed a get-tough immigration measure late last year without a guest worker plan. Conservatives such as Scottsdale Congressman J.D. Hayworth want border enforcement shored up and tougher penalties against employers who hire illegals put in place before a guest worker package is considered.
West Valley Congressman Trent Franks said Thursday he wants the U.S. Senate to approve the House's enforcement bill and then a guest worker plan can be considered separate from that.
Illegal immigration and border security are top economic and political issues in Arizona and other border states. Key industries rely heavily on migrant and immigrant labor but Franks and others worry terrorists will try or already are trying to enter the U.S. via the Southwestern border with Mexico for a domestic attack.
We need to restore respect for our immigration laws. That means we need to enforce those laws in a fair and consistent manner. It is not fair or consistent to reward those who came here illegally and give them priority in a guest worker system.
They must be deported. If they go willingly, they we could generously allow them to still apply to the guest worker program. If we have to seek them out and aprehend them, they should be banned from applying, if not permenantly, at least for a considerable number of years.
Not if the proper "carrot and stick" policies are enacted. If it is easer (cheaper) to hire a legal worker than risk the fines of hiring an illegal worker, or of a worker being here illegally, then only legal workers will be hired.
No "guest worker" program has a prayer of working unless it is combined with some "stick" component that will make that balance work.
pass a guest worker program, and you will see the largest movement to unionize various industries in this country since the 1920s.
This si one of the main reasons I am a conservative independant. I quit the party in 2003.
If we want these people to be "legal", then we *must* make it easier for them to be legal than not. If we make it hard for them to be legal, then the penalty for them remaining illegal must be steep, otherwise we won't tip the balance to make it "easier to be legal than not".
Political realities what they are (many blue staters don't see a problem with illegals in their big cities), I think we might have a better chance with an amnesty program than without. Because these libs won't tolerate the steep enforcement that would be required otherwise.
I'd love to send all the illegals home too. I just don't think it will ever happen, and I want some policy that will bring them in under legal status, so we have a chance at catching the real bad guys like criminals and terrorists that come over.
What part of "illegal" do you not understand?
Yeah. Sucks doesn't it? I don't see a way around that, except we should also pass some laws to limit unions to the same rules applied to other industries. Anti-trust rules, etc. As it is, the liberal governments of decades past gave them too many special laws that allow them to abuse their positions.
those workers also vote, they won't elect people who thwart their move to unionize.
right now, employment of illegals is below the radar for most workers. but when the day comes that workers at sanctionied businesses who only hire above board, see a busload of newly minted mexican workers being bused in by their corporation to take jobs - you'll have a sea change in worker sentiment towards a program like this, and the elected officials who put it in place.
What part of "it ain't possible to deport 10 million people" do you not understand? What are you going to do, build a new Los Angeles from scratch south of the border? Or just let them die in the desert right off?
I don't know, maybe the trains that Adolf used to send the Jews to their "worker camps" are still available. They had a full blown effort to "deport" Jews for several years, and all they got was a mere 6 million of them. [/sarc]
and don't worry, its a short move for the same voices to be looking to give the guest workers the right to vote too.
Tell it to the Serbs.
Narby, quite comparing my country to Hitler. Send them south to Mexico and let the Mexican gov take care of them. If they starve, it is their problem.
stop comparing this to the Holocaust.
fine, don't deport them - we are better off with the status quo, then a formal guest worker program that will bring even more people here to take jobs, once you open up job opportunities in above board industries to foreign workers also.
ping
I really can't see any major change in the current situation. Where it's possible for mexican speaking workers to work, illegals are already there. We don't have that many low skilled factory jobs any longer, and the one's we have are already heavily unionized, so that situation won't change.
It might be possible to move more "legal" mexicans into fast food jobs. But there are already many in that industry now, so what's the difference a few more will make?
Perhaps if the anti-immigration crowd would stop opposting every single bill, even the ones that give them almost everything they demand, something like McPain's bill wouldn't have a chance of passing.
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