We can find them now without a guest worker program. Congress has a voluntary program in place by which employers can verify if a prospective employee has a legal right to work in the United States. Simply make that program mandatory and you can identify the shops that are employing illegal aliens.
The purpose of the guest worker program should be an inducement for employers to seek inexpensive labor through a legal venue and to provide an opportunity and incentive for illegal aliens to return to their home countries and get in line for legal admission.
Bush's program has a chance of shrinking the problem to the point where we might actually be able to make progress on the issue of illegal immigration.
The President's proposal can do no such thing because it will reward illegal aliens and their employers for breaking the law. Rewarded behavior is not discouraged.
I suspect that a large number of the companies employing these illegal aliens already know they are illegal aliens. Employers are already required to check that their employees can be legally employeed.
Requiring that particular check may disuade some employeers, and if it's cost effective sounds like a good idea. However, it's not going to work with the companies that are already knowingly hiring these people.
The purpose of the guest worker program should be an inducement for employers to seek inexpensive labor through a legal venue and to provide an opportunity and incentive for illegal aliens to return to their home countries and get in line for legal admission.
Do you really think these people are going to travel back to their own country and wait in line? You think somewhere between 8 to 12 million people are going to give up their sources of income and travel back to Mexico where they don't have any means of supporting themselves, and wait for permission to reenter the US? Do you think that they're going to risk the chance that they won't be allowed to reenter, and then have to risk the dangerous route or illegally reentering the US again?
We don't have ther resources to round up and deport 8 to 12 million people.
Our court system can't process the inevatable appeals.
We don't have any place to hold the people while processing their deportation.
There's also the fact that if you tried rounding up that many people and forcibly removing them from the country, you'd have open revolt in some communities.
Things would get very, very ugly. People would die. Riots would destroy millions if not billions in property.
Is it really worth it just to punish people for breaking some of the most ignored laws in our country?
These people came here because there's nothing for them in Mexico. Many risked their lives in comming here. They are desperate, and telling them to trust that they can come back if they go back to Mexico where they have no job and no place to live isn't going to be comforting to them.
It seems like the majority of people want this now, but as soon as people see what it really involves the backlash against the government would be amazing.
There's a lot of politicians talking tough, but very few are going to support an effective effort to remove the illegal aliens currently in the US. That means they'll talk, but nothing will happen, and the problem will get worse.