This is from January 2004, but worth the time to read again. Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Amnesty, Again
This country should have learned — apparently, it has not

By Mark Krikorian

President Bush has kicked off his reelection year by proposing an amnesty for illegal aliens dressed up as a guestworker program, plus the importation of millions of new guestworkers and a significant increase in immigration. What is the White House thinking?

The administration first floated the idea of a guest-worker amnesty in 2001, during President Bush’s honeymoon meeting with Mexico’s President Vicente Fox, but discussions came to a halt because of 9/11 (as well as ferocious opposition from House Republicans). Over the subsequent two years, the administration issued occasional statements expressing the continued desire to reach an immigration deal with Mexico—but the complete lack of substance in these pronouncements, combined with Secretary of State Colin Powell’s careful efforts to keep expectations low, suggested it was little more than talk, intended to appease the beleaguered Fox administration and curry favor with hostile Hispanic racial-identity groups in this country.

But there is more to the current amnesty talk than the sweet nothings of diplomacy. The president has unveiled the outlines of his proposal in anticipation of his planned meeting with Fox during the January 12-13 “Summit of the Americas” in Monterrey, Mexico. It is described as a guest-worker program, but the “guest” concept is deceptive; in fact, the program would provide for the permanent importation of thousands new workers from overseas and amnesty for illegal aliens already here.

As to the first of these goals, the president has frequently said he wants an “immigration policy that helps match any willing employer with any willing employee.” Taking him at his word would suggest a return to 19th-century unlimited immigration, with the American labor market open to the world’s other 6 billion people. And, in fact, this seems to be the objective, because under the proposal, employers would decide which workers come into the United States, though it would maintain the fiction that Americans would have to be offered the jobs first.

Providing U.S. employers of low-skilled labor access to the entire workforce of the Third World would inevitably drive down wages and benefits for Americans, creating ever more “jobs Americans won’t do.” The White House seems to view immigration as similar to trade, seeking a market-driven system that allows free movement of people. But immigration and trade are fundamentally different issues. As Henry Simons, a pioneering University of Chicago free market advocate wrote in 1948: “To insist that a free-trade program is logically or practically incomplete without free migration is either disingenuous or stupid. Free trade may and should raise living standards everywhere . . . Free immigration would level standards, perhaps without raising them anywhere”……”

PLEASE read the rest here and pass around to those who are not paying attention.

National Review
January 26, 2004