I don't blame you. I don't want any kind of amnesty, but I am willing to look at a temporary guest worker plan. I realize there are industries that would cease to function without that labor, so we need some sort of sane and enforceable plan that will keep entire economic sectors from shutting down but will not provide amnesty. I don't know what that will look like at this point, but I do realize we'll never be able to catch and deport all the illegals here, so let's get a handle on who is here and get some taxes and fines out of them.
What it all boils down to is any plan congress devises, no matter how attractively packaged & presented, is not worth the paper its written on unless we can effectively enforce our immigration laws first, period. Congress knows this.
I don't hear anything coming out of DC which would lead me to believe they are serious about solving the problem.
The guestworker program will do little to fix the problems that we already have. If people cannot get a guestworker visa, then they will still cross illegaly and probably eventually get amnesty. But even the guestworker program itself doesn't solve many problems. When the work visas expire, there is no guarantee that guestworkers will leave willingly. If these workers overstay their visa, they can just have a child and then fight their deportment on the grounds that their kid is US citizen. In order to remedy this the current method of granting US citizenship must be changed. Becoming a US citizen merely because of location of birth is absusrd. In order to be born a citizen, Parents should be US citizens. Children should inherit the legal status of their parents. Otherwise the US will be full of citizens who are loyal to other nations, and not to the US. Everyone concerned about this issue should call their representatives and Senators and demand that they support an amendment to the Constitution to fix this problem.
It is good to talk to your own Representatives as well as the Speaker and Majority leaders. Senators and Representatives can be reached here:
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm