Congress tackles illegal immigration

REAL GUEST Act offers real solutions

By Rohit Joy
From the February 2006 Print Edition

Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, performed remarkably well in last year’s special election for California’s 48th Congressional District. As a third-party candidate campaigning almost exclusively on eliminating illegal immigration, he garnered more than 25 percent of the vote, while Republican candidate John Campbell, despite enjoying major-party status and running in a strongly Republican district, won the election with less than 45 percent. Gilchrist’s success in this race reveals just how important immigration has become in California and throughout the United States.

Most of the immigration reform bills that have been introduced in Congress establish guest-worker programs — under which employers can hire temporary workers to fill jobs they cannot find Americans to do — while strengthening border security and interior enforcement to curtail illegal immigration. One of these bills, sponsored by Senators John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., would create an “H-5B” nonimmigrant visa category for illegal aliens currently residing in the United States. Illegal aliens would pay $1,000 to apply for this visa. After working in the United States for six years, they would pay another $1,000 to apply for lawful permanent resident status. They would then be entitled to apply for U.S. citizenship under the same conditions as all other legal permanent residents are.

The McCain proposal is flawed in several ways. First, allowing illegal aliens to obtain American citizenship would be hugely rewarding them for violating U.S. law, and unfair to legal immigrants who patiently waited in line. The second problem with this bill is that it does not contain adequate enforcement provisions, so nothing would stop future waves of illegal immigration. Finally, employers of H-5B workers would not have to demonstrate that they first attempted to hire American workers, or pay the same wages and benefits as are paid to U.S. citizens performing similar jobs.

A second guest-worker bill, sponsored by John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., would create a new “W” guest-worker visa, for which both illegal aliens currently in the United States and foreign workers not qualifying for any other nonimmigrant visa would qualify. Illegal aliens who sign up for this visa would receive permission to live and work in the United States for five years. In addition, this bill would appropriate $1 billion for high-tech tools, roads, and barriers to control the borders, and increase the number of immigration inspectors by 1,250 over five years.

The primary difference between the Cornyn-Kyl bill and the McCain-Kennedy bill is that the former offers what NumbersUSA, an immigration-reduction organization, terms “exit amnesty,” in which illegal aliens are forgiven criminal and civil penalties but still required to leave the United States after participating in the guest-worker program, while the latter offers what NumbersUSA calls “jackpot amnesty,” where illegal aliens literally earn the “jackpot” — U.S. citizenship — for having come here unlawfully.

The Cornyn bill also contains much stronger provisions than the McCain bill to actually secure the borders. It does not, however, offer adequate protections for U.S. workers. Employers will simply offer the minimum wage rather than competitive U.S. wages, and when no American citizens apply, claim that they need a foreign worker. This would decrease U.S. wages and domestic employment growth.

A third proposal is the REAL GUEST Act, sponsored by Congressman Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. This bill would eliminate H-1B (high-tech), H-1C (nurses), H-2A (agricultural), and H-2B (seasonal) nonimmigrant visas and replace them with a single “H” nonimmigrant visa for all needed foreign workers, skilled and unskilled. There would be no limit to the number of H visas issued during any given time period, however, employers seeking H nonimmigrants would be required to show that they made good-faith efforts to recruit American workers for the jobs they need to fill, and that they offered these jobs to equally or better qualified U.S. citizens.

Employers would also be required to lay off H workers before U.S. employees, and to pay them the greater of the prevailing wage rate for the occupation or the median national wage rate as determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition to the above provisions, Tancredo’s bill increases the number of immigration inspectors by 2,000, allows the Army and Air Force to help secure the borders, and increases criminal penalties for illegal aliens and their employers.

The primary advantage of the Tancredo bill over the McCain and Cornyn bills is that it requires its border security and enforcement provisions to be satisfied before the guest-worker program is implemented, ensuring that large numbers of illegal aliens do not enter the United States to become guest workers. A second advantage is that this bill reforms existing skilled guest-worker programs, while the others only address programs for unskilled workers. Finally, the absence of an arbitrary cap on H visas ensures that the demand for foreign workers is fulfilled, while the stipulations for obtaining them make certain that employers do not displace perfectly qualified American workers to take advantage of cheap foreign labor.

Although more could be done to deter illegal entry, such as denying birthright citizenship to children born to illegal aliens, the REAL GUEST Act is the most effective of all the immigration reform proposals because it establishes a guest-worker program that keeps wages and employment of American citizens stable, does not provide amnesty to illegal aliens, and by making it more difficult for illegal aliens to find work and easier for authorities to apprehend them, discourages potential illegal aliens from coming here and encourages those already here to return home.

For more information on the REAL GUEST Act, log on to http://tancredo.house.gov/reformnow

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