The Washington Post has an article on the two different immigration approaches of the House and Senate today. The House doesn’t get it

A recent study by the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that unauthorized immigrants make up nearly 5 percent of the labor force. In the Washington region, they make up nearly 10 percent of the 3.1 million-strong workforce, providing mainly unskilled labor.

The federal government has a work visa — known as H-2B — that aims to help unskilled migrants enter the country legally. But the government issues only about 66,000 new H-2B visas each year. The guest workers, who generally take jobs in businesses such as restaurants, amusement parks, cleaning companies and landscaping firms, are allowed to stay for 10 months.

The House bill as passed would end the H-2b visa program. To have a society where our collective work ethic is slipping closer and closer to outright laziness, we ought to be welcoming hard working immigrants, and ought to be welcoming more than 66,000 per year. Then there are problems in the Senate, where the proposal extends the guest worker program and lengthens the application of the visa to 3 years, but the onus for enforcement is placed squarely on businesses, with substantial penalties for hiring an undocumented worker.

The whole article is worth reading, and demonstrates well the real effects of the “send ‘em home now” crowd’s rhetoric and the wages paid and businesses reliant on immigrant labor. We are at or near full employment levels. You can’t just cut out 5% of the work force and not send ripples through the entire economy. If these workers are forced out, there simply are not enough citizen workers to take the jobs.

UPDATE Mark Rose notes the public opinion behind controlling illegal immigration. To which I respond - Yeah, but the end-game is bad….really bad. Not just politically, but for the country. We have representative government to stand against bad policy, despite any popular support otherwise. This is a case where we need to do just that. Senator Specter, who I seldom respect, is on the right track. I just wish he’d go further with the concept of Americanization.