Ten Questions About Guest Worker Programs

Ten Questions About Guest Worker Programs
By: Congressman Lamar Smith

June 30, 2005

As printed in the Arizona Daily Star on June 30, 2005...

Guest worker programs may sound compassionate or necessary, but the more you look, the more you see problems. No guest worker program should be passed until these questions are satisfactorily answered:

1. Many illegal aliens enter the U.S. to work. But there is little enforcement of laws that prohibit employers from hiring illegal aliens. If such laws were enforced, it would reduce the attraction of coming to the U.S. In fact, not a single employer was fined last year for hiring an illegal alien. If current laws are not enforced, how can we expect similar restrictions in a guest worker program to be enforced?

2. If foreign workers are allowed to bring their families with them and stay for years, why would they return home where a job, if they can find one, pays one tenth as much?

3. Amnesty occurs when a person's crime is pardoned. Why isn't it amnesty when an illegal alien, instead of being deported for breaking our immigration laws, is allowed to stay in the U.S.? And why isn't it "amnesty plus" when they are not only allowed to stay but also allowed to work and offered permanent residence and eventual citizenship? Do we really want to reward people for breaking the law?

4. Nearly every study shows that competition from cheap foreign labor displaces American workers, including legal immigrants, or depresses their wages. Rather than legalize illegal aliens, why not increase wages and make these jobs more attractive to American workers?

5. Why wouldn't a guest worker program be an open invitation to potential terrorists? They could enter the country legally, get a job, and use the program as cover. One of the terrorists who blew up the garage of the World Trade Center in 1993 did just that under an earlier program.

6. Guest workers do not earn enough to pay income taxes. And, if they pay Social Security taxes, at their low wages they will get back $100,000 more than they paid in. They also use many government services like education and health care. So why isn't a guest worker program a net loss for American taxpayers?

7. If illegal aliens are legalized, and then sponsor others for admission, why won't this cause a dramatic increase in immigration, which is already at a record high? (Every public opinion poll shows that Americans want to decrease immigration, not increase it).

8. Even if there is a guest worker program, millions of illegal aliens will continue to come across our borders to obtain government benefits, seek other jobs, and gain automatic citizenship for their children born in the U.S. On top of this, thousands more will enter illegally because they think they will be eligible for a guest worker amnesty program. So why doesn't the very prospect of such a program increase illegal immigration?

9. A guest worker program involves processing millions of applications, enforcing many more laws and regulations, and monitoring thousands of employers. Doesn't this simply create another huge and expensive bureaucracy?

10. There are over 10 million illegal aliens living in the U.S. full time, perhaps twice that many counting those who are in the U.S. temporarily. Do we really want to take a chance on a massive guest worker program with no cap on the numbers and no sunset without learning the consequences? What impact will such a program have on American workers, wages, social services, health care costs, schools, taxpayers, and politics?

Guest worker programs sound good, but they only compound the already serious troubles that illegal immigration causes. We should hesitate before we leap.

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