"I'm not sure what I think about this provision. I dislike Davis-Bacon, but if employers are required to pay top dollar for guest workers, might that not mean they will use American workers instead?"
It's clever. It will kill the business lobbies ardor since the whole purpose is to depress wages of Americans.
But we don't need an extra guest worker plan.
As for the unions, the AFL-CIO says they support amnesty for illegals already here. Part of the policy reasoning was the fantasy they would get to unionize them. They were suckers, more illegals would still come. They are quite naive.
But the AFL-CIO did come out against the extra, new "guest worker" plan. That would legalize more wage depression beyond new illegal immigration. Here is an attempt to kill it.
The Democratic party is in a bind. Their corporate benefactors have framed Amnesty+ as an issue of anti-racism and caring for their upper class members, MSM and the chattering classes. Look at the chats and blogs, near silence of any discussion of the economic effects on American citizens and residents. The unions are a tricky bunch though. They've been deceived about the globalization project, just now waking up.
Another reason to be against this is it just adds more bureaucracy.
Juicing the Domestic labor pools to squeeze out new profits is an expensive business, but the lobbies won't bear the costs.
Everybody is being bamboozled here. The only winners are the companies that will get "guest workers" (indentured servants), who, since there will be no path to citizenship for them, will likely not complain about conditions/pay/hours, etc. Manna from heaven!
This crowd doesn't care about our democratic republic, average working Americans, or national security. And Bush appears to be taking their side.
Dennis Hastert seems to be the one who can hold the line here.