Immigration Reform Efforts Reinvigorate Support for Guest Worker Program

The Los Angeles Times ^ | Sept. 18, 2006 | Lee Romney, Staff Writer

[truthkeeper]

OCEANSIDE — Gilberto Valiente Romero cringes at the memory of his 2003 journey. The long trip to the Arizona border from his village in the Mexican state of Puebla. The hike across miles of desert. Then the bruising finale, as he was captured on the U.S. side and sent back.

But since 2004, the father of three has made the seasonal trek without fear of arrest, under the auspices of Oceanside vine-ripe tomato giant Harry Singh & Sons. Each year in June, Valiente travels at company expense to the northern Mexican city of Hermosillo and is put up at a hotel to await a guest worker visa.

He then boards an air-conditioned charter bus, complete with movie entertainment, for the trip to Singh & Sons, near Camp Pendleton. For six months, he works the fields for a government-set wage, $9 an hour this year. Housing is free and his three subsidized daily meals cost $8.78. Come December, a bus takes him home.

[gubamyster]

ping

[dubie]

[mtbopfuyn]

Free transportation, room and board, and $9/hr. Tell me again how much a head of lettuce will cost if we don't have illegals and guest workers.

[Ben Ficklin]

".......have scaled down operations or moved them south of the border."

This past spring, early in the season, a local mom and pop grocer had Mexican tomatos for 79 cents a lb and Florida grown was $1.19

[goldfinch]

I don't have a problem with a guest worker program so long as it is limited and does not lead to citizenship. I could support a program that allowed a guest worker into the US for a total of 60 months....6 months a year for 10 years seems reasonable to me. And no anchor babies either.

[Ben Ficklin]

There is zero chance of a guest worker program because Tom and Ted have said no.

[Invisible Gorilla]

Who said no to what?

[Ben Ficklin]

"Who said no to what"

There have been 3 seperate guest worker programs proposed. The original Bush Plan from 04, Kyl-Cornyn in 05, and Pence-Hutchinson in 06.

Neither Ted Kennedy/democrats nor Tom Tancredo/House Immigration Caucus will allow any of these to pass.

[Invisible Gorilla]

There have been 3 seperate guest worker programs proposed.

That's incorrect.

Did Tancredo say no to his own guest worker plan?

[Ben Ficklin]

My recollection of anything that Tancredo wrote resembling immigration reform was, first, in 04, which was nothing more than a hodge-podge of nothing that he quickly retreated from. And second, in 05, just prior to the release of Kyl-Cornyn, he wrote a bill. It was monumentally kooky in that it would gut all the existing guest worker programs, as if they weren't inoperable enough as they are now.

So when you refer to Tancredo's guest worker plan, maybe you can direct me to it. Whatever it might be, it is not now being considered in the House, nor was it ever considered in the House.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Did Tancredo say no to his own guest worker plan?

Why yes, he did. In 2003, he supported a guest-worker provision.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

It was monumentally kooky in that it would gut all the existing guest worker programs, as if they weren't inoperable enough as they are now.

It wasn't "kooky" and it was better than all the existing guest-worker proposals. Nevertheless, Tancredo did support a guest-worker plan, a genuine, real guest-worker plan (which will be a part of any immigration legislation that passes no matter what) which he now opposes.

[CWOJackson]

Go Pence Go!

[Invisible Gorilla]

So, there have been more than three plans, correct? Even Cornyn had an earlier plan, as did Larry Craig and Chris Cannon. Tancredo had a plan of his own, and whatever your criticisms of it might be, your statement "there is zero chance of a guest worker program because Tom and Ted have said no," is also incorrect.

[Invisible Gorilla]

Just to clarify, are you saying Tancredo would now oppose his own plan, or that he opposes the guest worker programs that give priority to legalizing illegal aliens?

[Rex Anderson]

Tancredo was for his own plan before he was against it.

[Ben Ficklin]

Well technically, you are correct, even if you have the date wrong. He wrote the bill subsequent to, and as a counter to Bush releasing his short outlined plan. At the time, there were two FR polls on the Bush Plan and the Tancredo Plan. There was so little support, that Tancredo abandoned it.

His second one was universally panned because it would reorganize/gut the H1B and other visas, plus it said nothing about the illegals in the country.

The second bill was also considered to be something that he threw together and released the day before Kyl-Cornyn to prevent them from sitting down on top of him.

Tancredo thought that Bush was trying to define the argument. That Bush had his plan/position and was trying to place his plan in the center by defining the left and right. Under this scenario, Bush and Rove were supervising McCain's negotiations with Kennedy to establish the left end. Additionally, that Kyl and Cornyn had written their bill with supervision from Rove and Bush and it was an attempt to sit down on his previous position/first bill. And that would define the right end.

When Tancredo got wind of what was in the Kyl-Cornyn bill, he hastily threw together something further to the right and introduced it the day before Kyl-Cornyn, allowing him to squeeze out from beneath them. If you go back and look at them, Kyl-Cornyn was very similar to Tancredo's first bill, except K-C included a lot of enforcement.

In both cases, 04 and 05, Tancredo was not trying to write a bill or a guest worker plan, He was simply trying to put himself to the right of somebody else's plan.

If Tancredo had seriously written a bill, Coburn and Vetter would have introduced it into the Senate. They are his allies.

[Ben Ficklin]

Well yes, there have been more than just those. But we were talking about guest worker plans, not path to citizenship.

And you are right about Cornyn's first bill. But most people think that his first bill was written at the request of Bush and when Bush subsequently released his plan, it was suppossed to be an endorsement of that bill.

[NRA2BFree]

BTTT