Guest workers, immigration, and all that

Kerry Howley has an interesting piece on guest workers and immigration which focuses mainly on the Singapore experience with guest workers but also points out that guest workers here in America have not always stayed to become immigrants - and in fact many illegals here now would have gone home to Mexico and points south already but for the increased security on the southern border. I find a lot of the article's arguments persuasive, but I don't think that any type of guest worker measure is going to pass without some penalty for the illegals who are already here and more troops/police on the border. You could maybe tack on something to strip citizenship from anchor babies while you're at it, although I think most of the people calling for a guest worker bill on the left would find that even less palatable than, say, an administrative fine levied on illegals who want to "come out" and get guest worker status.

Still, even with legalized guest workers and an expanded H2B visa pool, you're going to need more ICE men to ride herd on the sizable number of illegals, students, guest workers and other folks whose permission to be here is either temporary or nonexistent; there also needs to be more manpower allocated to dealing with the current hideous backlog of would-be legal immigrants. Too bad we can't just rededicate the Department of Education's budget to that; it would be a much better expenditure of the money than whatever the hell those people are doing now. (Instapundit)

Guest workers, immigration, and all that

Kerry Howley has an interesting piece on guest workers and immigration which focuses mainly on the Singapore experience with guest workers but also points out that guest workers here in America have not always stayed to become immigrants - and in fact many illegals here now would have gone home to Mexico and points south already but for the increased security on the southern border. I find a lot of the article's arguments persuasive, but I don't think that any type of guest worker measure is going to pass without some penalty for the illegals who are already here and more troops/police on the border. You could maybe tack on something to strip citizenship from anchor babies while you're at it, although I think most of the people calling for a guest worker bill on the left would find that even less palatable than, say, an administrative fine levied on illegals who want to "come out" and get guest worker status.

Still, even with legalized guest workers and an expanded H2B visa pool, you're going to need more ICE men to ride herd on the sizable number of illegals, students, guest workers and other folks whose permission to be here is either temporary or nonexistent; there also needs to be more manpower allocated to dealing with the current hideous backlog of would-be legal immigrants. Too bad we can't just rededicate the Department of Education's budget to that; it would be a much better expenditure of the money than whatever the hell those people are doing now. (Instapundit)