No, it wasn't. If you can get them signed up for the guest worker program, you will have their names and addresses,and a way to find and make them go home when their time is up.
You can't find 12 million people and ship them home. You can make it illegal to employ them, but you won't be able to arrest, prosecute, and convict the employers of 12 million people over a 6-year period. You can make it a felony to be here, but you can't jail 12 million people, or provide 12 million public defenders, in a few-year period.
The guest worker program is a way to get most of these people to come out of the shadows, so we can get rid of them later (or so we can evaluate them to determine which ones we want or need to stay).
A guest worker program properly implemented is certainly NOT what a lot of people here want, but it is the key to stopping the amnesty people. The more we fight the guest worker program, instead of embracing it and making sure it's temporary, the more likely we are to lose the fight over an amnesty bill.
I don't believe it is imperative to rid the country of the 12 million illegals in the next two years. They are here now, we can take a little time to purge the system.
We DO need to seal the borders NOW, and make harsher punishment for employers NOW, and turn the IRS and Social Security administrations on to provide the information they aren't sharing NOW, and to make a major thrust to catch and deport illegals NOW.
If we do that, we can use the guest worker program as the carrot which will flush millions of illegals out to where they can be tracked -- and take the sails out of the amnesty ship.
How depressing.
An American President tells his country and the world that it's "unrealistic" and not "compassionate" to secure our borders.
Strange times we're livin' in.
Include in the "guest worker provision" an electronic I.D. card that permits/requires employers and INS agents to verify immediately -- like a credit card check -- that the card is valid and the person here legally. Include fingerprint registration to resolve issues of lost/stolen I.D.'s, etc.
Require deportation for any "guest worker" who doesn't actually work for more than 4 consecutive weeks or more than 10 weeks out of the year. Limit by statute eligibilty for public assistance. And, best of all, requiring this form of electronic registration with the feds and linking it to tax payments made for the guest worker I.D. will go a long way to eliminating the underground cash economy for illegals, and increase tax receipts.
The one problem with what you're saying is we already have a guest worker program in H1-b by which to judge any new ones. They too can be tracked and deported with violations but as expected they're not. It's estimated there's over a million visa overstayers and it's unlikely they're going anywhere.
Now they want to expand it to include at least 12 million more? I really think there should be no debate in Congress about what to do with illegals here until we get the borders under control. Until that happens it's all just going to get worse and worse.
I'm not fighting a guestworker program. However if it includes people who are illegally in the country then it is just another word for amnesty.
Sorry, I'm not buying what you're selling.
susie
Build the wall from CA to TX now to stop any more illegals from coming in! Be sure to pump up security for those coming in by air and chase down and deport those that fail to go home after their visa expires. How? Add more and better border control agents at airports
Heavily fine and then jail non-complying employers who hire the illegals. Then, pump up the police forces to handle all the crime that will inevitably follow when the illegals can't find work.
Ship all the illegals now in our jails back to their countries of origin.
Next: Find a way to ID all visitors to the US, one that is not easy to counterfeit (as are all SS cards, Green cards, passports, voter records, Mexican IDs and State-issued driver's licenses now being freely used by illegals). In other words, we must face the difficult, but inevitable idea of a national ID card that cannot be forged or counterfeited and a simple way to pass them through some kind of machine that instantly identifies false or mis-used cards. Deport anyone with such a damaged or false card.
As for the remaining millions, urge them to go home by every means possible and allow them to return to the US only when they meet the conditions of legal immigration. That means a gradual, but non-stop system of deportation.
NO AMNESTY for those that remain here!
Locate and jail all "coyotes" and other groups that support or facilitate illegal immigration. That might include some churches and the ACLU.
If some illegals are "proven" agricultural workers, and can be identified as such, allow them to stay for two years, but provide them with an unbreakable "agri-worker" ID card that can be renewed if they provide evidence of actual work in agriculture in a specific place or state.
Stop or heavily tax all methods of sending money back to countries of origin.
. Stop making it easy for illegals to get drivers licenses or other unacceptable ID cards. Cut Federal funding to States that are now providing such IDs.
Immediately pass a law that prohibits any more "citizenship by birth" methods of getting around the law. Also stop the allowance of family members to be sponsored and brought into the US by illegals already here.
George, if you will do this, you may avoid a revolution. We ain't buying any plan that suggest amnesty in any other language. We westerners are beyond angry, but you don't seem to "get it" yet. It's time to show some real cojones! In the meantime, order, with the State Govs, National Guard troops on the borders until the wall is up.