Queueless on Immigration

Why should day laborers have to "touch back"?

Shikha Dalmia | April 26, 2007

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They managed to kill Bush's comprehensive immigration reform proposal that would have created a guest worker program while simultaneously ramping up border enforcement. Indeed, the most promising immigration compromise now wending its way through the Senate contains a "trigger" mechanism that would delay the implementation of a guest worker program till: effective sanctions against employers using illegals are put in place; border patrolling is bolstered; and all foreign entrants have a biometric ID. These conditions are so onerous that this "trigger" will likely never go off. This is not immigration reform; this is immigration status-quo forever entrenched into law.

Immigration reformers need to reject this faux compromise. And before they approach the issue again, they need to first recapture the high-ground by exposing the myth of the queue - and forthrightly embracing amnesty.

Shikha Dalmia is a senior analyst at the Reason Foundation.

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