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IMMIGRATION-U.S.: Bush Floats Plan to Legalise Guest Workers

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jan 7 2004 (IPS) - In a bid to boost battered ties with Mexico and encourage Hispanic voters to back his re-election, President George W. Bush on Wednesday proposed a major guest-worker programme that could legalise the status of millions of undocumented workers in the United States.

The programme, however, faces an uphill fight in Congress, where a number of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have denounced it as an election-year ploy. If enacted, it would mark the most important overhaul of U.S. immigration laws in almost 20 years.

Speaking on the eve of meetings next week in Monterrey with Mexican President Vicente Fox, Bush said his plan offered a ”compassionate” response to a long-festering problem, and would also serve to better secure U.S. borders from illegal immigration.

”As a nation that values immigrants and depends on immigrants, we should have immigration laws that work and make us proud. Yet today we do not,” the president said in remarks to a specially invited audience at the White House.

”Instead, we see many employers turning to the illegal labour market. We see millions of hard-working men and women condemned to fear and insecurity in a massive undocumented economy.”

”Illegal entry across our borders makes more difficult the urgent task of securing the homeland,” Bush added.

The plan, which is more modest than wide-ranging proposals that were being considered by Washington and Mexico City when the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon put immigration reform on ice, was given a cool response by some pro-immigration groups, as well as conservatives in Bush’s own Republican Party.

”It amounts to nothing more than a warmed-over bracero programme, actually,” said Raul Yzaguirre, director of the National Council of La Raza, which has long championed the rights of Mexican immigrants, in particular.

Under that programme, millions of migrant labourers and their families were brought to the United States from the 1940s to the 1960s, but many did not receive the benefits promised to them.

Mexicans are believed to make up about 60 percent of the 8-14 million illegal immigrants thought to be residing in the United States today.

Yzaguirre expressed disappointment that the programme was not designed to lead to eventual citizenship, and warned that many undocumented immigrants who are eligible to participate might not do so for that reason. ”It still amounts to sugar coating what is not a very attractive proposition,” he said.

Conservative Republicans reacted with even greater hostility.

Representative Tom Tancredo, who chairs the 70-member Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus that favours tightening immigration controls, said the proposals amounted to an ”amnesty” for illegal immigrants and thus marked a ”step backwards”.

He also predicted the plan is unlikely to get through Congress this year.

”People who are here illegally – they need to be deported, Tancredo told CNN. ”People who hire them need to be fined.”

Bush’s proposal, which is largely based on a pending bill introduced by two Arizona Republicans last year, would provide foreign nationals with three-year work visas entitling them to minimum-wage and other legal protections during their stay in the United States.

Under the plan, undocumented workers already residing in the country could apply for such a visa immediately, provided their current employers sponsored their applications. If they had no employers or their employers failed to sponsor them, they would be subject to deportation.

If living abroad, potential workers could apply for visas if they received a job offer and their potential employer could show that no U.S. workers were available to fill the post.

All visas are renewable on the same conditions, although the plan would also provide financial incentives, including credits, for workers to return to their homelands, according to Bush.

While the visas were in force, workers could travel to and from their homelands without having to worry about being turned back at the U.S. border.

But participation in the programme would not lead to citizenship and participants who wished to become citizens would have to apply through existing channels.

At the same time, Bush said he wants to increase the annual number of ”green cards”, which give foreign workers permanent residence and move them closer to citizenship, if they wish to apply for it. But he did not specify a number.

Currently, the government may issue up to 140,000 green cards a year, far fewer than the 250,000 low-skilled workers who experts believe cross U.S. borders in search of jobs each year.

”In order for this proposal to be meaningful and effective, we have to give people a path to permanent residency,” Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum (NIF) told IPS after Bush’s remarks.

”The president indicated that the citizenship process should be made smoother, but he hasn’t told us how that’s going to happen.”

Yzaguirre stressed that Bush’s failure to tie the proposed visa programme to eventual permanent residence and citizenship is what made it a ”bracero” programme.

Although the millions of workers under that scheme were supposed to be protected by federal law – including the minimum wage – these were rarely enforced, and many “braceros” became impoverished and exploited itinerant labourers who followed the harvests across the United States, unable to save money, gain credit or send their children to school.

Many analysts here see Bush’s move as primarily a political gesture designed to win Latino votes for his re-election campaign and to repair his once-effusive, now tattered relationship with Fox and other Latin American leaders, who have been badly disappointed by Bush’s neglect of his southern neighbours since 9/11.

Bush received roughly 35 percent of the Latino vote in the 2000 presidential election campaign, in part by promoting immigration reform as one of his top priorities.

He clearly hopes to increase his support in the Latino community this year, which could play a decisive role in key ”swing” states, such as Florida, New Mexico, New Jersey and Illinois, where the Hispanic population exceeds 12 percent.

Democrats, who have strongly supported easing immigration reform, are likely to call for more sweeping measures when Bush’s proposal is formally submitted to Congress. One of their pending bills would grant permanent residence to undocumented illegal children who complete high school and go to college or join the military.

”I certainly hope the administration’s long-awaited re-involvement in this fundamental debate is genuine and not because of election-year conversion,” noted Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy. ”The immigration status quo is outdated, unjust and unacceptable.”