And above all, our government needs to speak with a united voice (or as close to it as possible) that there is absolutely no possible way that illegal aliens will be able to benefit from a guest-worker program or any other kind of legal status unless they first go back to their home countries and wait in line the right way. Holding out that possibility for them, as Bush keeps trying to do, only encourages more illegal entry.
What good would a fence do? We've just recently found tunnels. (Actually, the Israelis have had to deal with tunnels, too. ) And if we blocked the land borders, with either fences or tunnel blocks, we'd still have to deal with the coasts. "Securing our borders" is a slogan that is meaningless. And I haven't even mentioned access by air.
We do need guest workers. It's a real shame that we got rid of regulated guest worker programs and wound up with unregulated illegal immigrants. There are many legitimate arguments about how we get back to a regulated guest worker program, but pretending that we don't need one is folly.