Amnesty or guest worker

Phyllis Schlafly wrote in Townhall President George W. Bush, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and several others are promoting new laws that would grant amnesty or guest-worker status to millions of illegal immigrants living in the United States and to an indefinite number of foreign workers. All these bills should be rejected on moral grounds.

Inviting foreigners to come to America as guest workers is like saying: You people are only fit to work the menial jobs that Americans think they are too good to work. We will let you come into the United States for a few years to work low-paid jobs, but you have no hope of rising up the economic and social ladder.

Not at all. We still have the normal immigration policy of taking a certain number from each country, and if they want to stand in line for that they can. But if they just want a short term job, the guest worker program makes sense.

The various bills differ in whether or when the guest workers will be expelled back to the poverty they came from, but the bottom line is to create a subordinate underclass of unassimilated foreign workers, like serfs or peasants in corrupt countries. That's not the kind of economy that made America great.

America welcomes immigrants who want to be American, who come to the United States legally, obey the laws and the Constitution, and learn to speak English. Most start with entry-level jobs, but they get the opportunity to rise up and realize the American dream. France and Germany have demonstrated the folly of guest-worker economies. In France and Germany, foreigners were admitted to toil at low-wage jobs. Now, both countries host thousands of foreign residents who fail to assimilate, burden the social welfare system, and become more disgruntled and dangerous every year....

Which is why George Bush's proposal is they would only be able to stay here a few years and then would have to go back home. If they want to stand in line to come back and get on a path to citizenship, that is fine.

An amnesty or guest-worker plan would reward lawbreakers. The guest workers would be exempted from punishment for breaking U.S. immigration laws by entering our country illegally, or by using fraudulent documents.

False. The Guest Worker program would assign them special douments that are almost impossible to forge.

And employers would be exempted from punishment for hiring them....Failing to close our border to illegal immigration also means giving up the war on drugs...

No one said anything about failing to close the border. Closing it, but having a way for them to come through and get special documentation is not an open border.

Legal immigrants must be healthy to be admitted, but nobody is giving health examinations to the people smuggled across the border.

But health exams could be given to people officially coming in on guest worker visas.