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Chertoff: Guest-Worker Program Needed
The United States will have to create a new guest-worker program and not just rely on tougher border enforcement and fence-building to stop the flow of illegal migrants into the country, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Monday.
"Without a temporary-worker program, getting control of the border by 2008 is very, very difficult," Chertoff told reporters. But he also cited statistics that he said showed progress in controlling illegal immigration.
The numbers were offered less than two weeks before November 7 congressional elections in which illegal immigration has been a major issue, especially in the southwest.
Chertoff said arrests of illegal migrants on the southwest border were down 38 percent during July through September, compared with the same period in 2005. He tied the lower numbers to the deployment of National Guard troops there.
He also said federal agents expelled a record 186,000 illegals from the United States this year - 10 percent more than in 2005. Enhanced law enforcement was part of a "strategy that if consistently followed will get the U.S. security at the border," Chertoff said.
Story Continues Below Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, which embraced the U.S. Senate's comprehensive immigration reform, said: "It's good that they're working toward securing our border and it's good they're having some success at that."
But he added, "I don't think anybody is pretending enforcement alone is going to solve our immigration problems."
Wilkes cited the need to create better alternatives for foreigners to work legally in the United States and compared the granting of 5,000 work visas annually with the 1 million people who come into the country each year searching for jobs.
Conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives blocked broad immigration reform pushed by President George W. Bush, in favor of border security legislation focusing on fence building and more law enforcement agents and materials.
The comprehensive immigration reform would have created a new guest worker plan easing the way for more foreigners to harvest crops in the United States and perform other jobs that Americans either do not want or lack the training to perform. The Senate this year approved such a bill, which would have established a path to citizenship for the 12 million or so illegal immigrants living in the United States. But the measure was opposed by conservative Republicans.
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: Inside Cover Stories
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