Word: workers
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...repackaging his views. As recently as January 2004, Bush used his first policy announcement of that re-election year to unveil a guest-worker program that would allow illegal immigrants to obtain legal status for at least six years if they have a job and their employer vouches for them. The plan incensed conservatives. Talk-radio hosts and bloggers fanned resentment over "Press 1 for English" phone menus and borders porous to drugs and terrorists. In June, two months after a citizens' group called the Minuteman Project began vigilante patrols of the Mexican border, Bush told lawmakers...
That's why Bush is calling this week for a series of border-security measures that will make his guest-worker plan look like an afterthought in his immigration policy. Bush will call for the hiring of more border guards and the use of more technology like unmanned aircraft and ground sensors to better police the borders. He will also push for increased holding facilities for illegal immigrants who are picked up. Roughly 100,000 a year benefit from a de facto "catch and release" policy, since there aren't enough beds for them...
...last 10 years, and the problem is worse today." But the Democrats have had no more success than the Republicans at divining a policy that will reassure both Latino voters and those who worry that illegal immigrants are unfairly taking jobs and social services. Democrats want a guest-worker program, but Kennedy's bill would still require that workers who want legal status, in addition to passing background checks and taking English and civics lessons, pay a $2,000 fine plus back taxes, punitive measures opposed by some immigrant advocates on the left...
...California Governor Pete Wilson, a Republican, ran an ad keening that illegal immigrants "just keep coming." Wilson won, but Republicans in California say the damage to the party's standing among Hispanics persists to this day. Bush is already giving up some symbolic territory. When he announced his guest-worker plan in 2004, he did so before an audience of 200 Latinos. By contrast, his speech this week on "border security and immigration reform" was scheduled for an Air Force base in Arizona. He planned to meet with border patrollers in Texas the next...
...intense. TIME surveyed business leaders in California, Colorado, Florida and Minnesota; nearly all said the conservative position on immigration ignores the reality that there is virtually no labor market for physically demanding, low-wage jobs in agriculture, construction and hospitality. "In fact, we have to compete for [illegal workers] now," says Jay Taylor, president of Taylor & Fulton Farms, a tomato concern based in Palmetto, Fla. "It used to be migrant workers were just vegetable-and-fruit pickers or housekeepers. But look at the incredible housing boom we've had in Florida in recent years. Now they're being sought...