The Dubious Guest Worker Program

I have been meaning to work up a post on this, but my procrastination has paid off. Someone did the work for me. Here's Derb:

I'm baffled as to why anyone would want to hire these temporary workers. The entire point of illegal immigrant labor is that it's cheap B*E*C*A*U*S*E***I*T*S***I*L*L*E*G*A*L*. If you legalize it, it ain't cheap any more. You've got minimum wage laws, workmen's comp, benefits regulations, etc., etc. to comply with, and all sorts of litigation possibilities (harassment, discrimination, etc.) to hedge against. You might as well hire Americans.

Unless you think that Americans are crappy workers—lazy, shiftless, ignorant, ill-motivated, and unreliable. If our politicians actually do think this, will one of them please say it out loud?

This is why I'm so into border security and internal enforcement. If all the guest worker slots are filled, who would wait for one to open up when you can just cross the border, under bid the guest workers and get a job. Bush mentioned border security and cracking down on employers in his speech, but... I'll believe it when I see it. And I'd like to see it before we go passing out all kinds of new entitlements to illegals.