Posted on July 27, 2006

Compromise Would Allow Unlimited Immigrants

Charles Hurt, Washington Times, July 26, 2006

[Editor’s Note: A summary of the compromise bill is available here.]

The latest proposal in Congress for a “guest”-worker program would allow unlimited immigration of eligible workers during the first three years and allow them and their families to remain here indefinitely.

Offered by two Republicans, the plan is criticized by proponents of stricter immigration laws. They say the program would tilt the nation’s immigration system toward millions of uneducated, unskilled workers.

{snip}

Under the Pence-Hutchison plan — a variation on a proposal Mr. Pence floated earlier this summer — the expansive “guest”-worker program would not begin until the president certified that the border had been secured. Only then would laborers matched with willing employers at an “Ellis Island Center” outside the United States be admitted indefinitely.

{snip}

Team America PAC, a group co-founded by Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican, has began a “Pence Watch” on its Web site (www.teamamericapac.org) and dismissed the proposal as a “massive amnesty” and an “atrocity.” Although Mrs. Hutchison opposed the Senate bill that many consider to include a grant of amnesty to many of the 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens, she voted earlier this month against including federal funds in the homeland security appropriations bill to pay for 800 more Border Patrol agents and fencing along high-traffic border areas.

“Having employers which have already broken the law determine the number of cheap foreign workers that will be admitted into the U.S. is a classic example of the fox guarding the henhouse,” said Mr. Tancredo, who is no longer directly involved in Team America. “No plan that allows temporary workers to stay permanently is a ‘guest’-worker plan.”

Among Republican leaders in both chambers, the proposal was received warmly.

{snip}