Immigration Emphasis on Guest Visas

WASHINGTON —  The U.S.-Mexican effort to overhaul immigration policy is now focusing on ways to allow large numbers of temporary guest workers into the United States to meet the demands of restaurants, hotels, health care and other service industries that are starved for employees, according to U.S. government officials and observers familiar with the talks.

Under the proposed approach, a broader array of U.S. industries would be able to sponsor foreign laborers, who then could enter the United States with temporary visas to fill specific jobs. Current programs for temporary workers largely have been limited to agriculture and high-technology.

The Bush administration’s emphasis on increasing the supply of temporary workers for U.S. employers suggests it has abandoned, at least for now, a broader reform of immigration policy. Indeed, administration officials already have conveyed to the Mexican government that an immigration strategy that relies strongly on a guest worker program is more acceptable politically than an overhaul that leans more heavily toward a broad amnesty for undocumented workers already in the United States.

U.S. and Mexican officials, in ongoing negotiations, would like to announce immigration policy reforms when Mexican President Vicente Fox visits this country in early September, but the White House has grown increasingly concerned about a conservative backlash against potential amnesty provisions. After U.S. and Mexican Cabinet officials met in Washington last week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell pointedly told reporters that future discussions would focus on how to structure a new program to bring greater numbers of temporary workers to the U.S.

Among the key matters to be resolved are how long the migrant workers could stay--some employers ask that it be years--and whether immigrants could convert their temporary status to permanent residency.

“The Bush administration feels that a guest worker/temporary worker program is a lot more politically viable at this point” than a broad legalization, said Armand B. Peschard-Sverdrup, who directs the Mexico program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and has closely followed U.S.-Mexico talks.

Business lobbyists have argued before Congress and the administration that the shortage of low-wage workers is chronic and will get worse as America’s population grows older. The restaurant industry, for example, says it will create 2 million jobs in the next decade with little likelihood that the domestic work force can fill them.

Nursing homes project a need for 600,000 new nurses’ aides over the same period. Hotels will need 700,000 more workers, by one estimate. And roofers, construction firms and janitorial services all report worker shortages.

“A broad guest worker program would be tremendously helpful,” said John Gay, co-chairman of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, which includes nursing homes, builders, meatpackers, hotels, restaurants, landscapers, retailers, amusement parks, pharmacies and others. “More workers is business’ No. 1 goal.”

There are now three programs under which foreign workers can be granted temporary work visas.

* The largest program, known as H-1B, allows 195,000 employees with college educations to enter the U.S. annually to serve the needs of the high-tech industry. Such workers may stay as long as six years, and they sometimes gain permanent legal residence.

* Another program, known as H-2B, allows in 66,000 seasonal workers each year, typically for 10 months or less. But employers say the paperwork requirements are so onerous that many avoid the program altogether.

* And to serve the farm industry, fewer than 50,000 temporary workers are allowed in each year.

In a vast assortment of other fields, however, employers have little legal recourse to draw on foreign workers, even when they cannot fill vacancies domestically, and they must wade through extensive regulations just to ensure they don’t hire illegal immigrants, who flood the United States by the millions in search of work.

“There’s an agreement that the status quo doesn’t work,” said Judy Golub, a senior director with the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. in Washington.

Industry lobbyists have asked the administration to streamline and broaden the program for seasonal workers, cutting the red tape and making it more responsive to the needs of employers.

Many also would like the government to establish a new program along the lines of the high-tech program, allowing foreign workers to stay in the country longer and offering them possible citizenship.

Whatever the details, it should be “easy, quick for employers to obtain and not require a lot of bureaucratic hoops,” said Theresa Brown, manager of labor and immigration policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Even in a softer U.S. economy, some industries continue to suffer from worker shortages. In the April-June quarter, for example, restaurants and bars added 58,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis, while the overall U.S. job totals fell by 271,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“We can’t fill all the jobs we’re creating domestically,” said Brendan Flanagan, a lobbyist for the National Restaurant Assn.

Many employers complain that it is virtually impossible to learn the true legal status of their immigrant workers, and they want a separate initiative to legalize undocumented workers as a way to increase the stability of their work forces.

Some would like a guest worker program to be flexible enough to allow illegal immigrants to participate, ultimately allowing the immigrants to gain legal status if they meet certain requirements.

Such issues are expected to play a significant role in U.S.-Mexico talks. “We want to work on options for a temporary workers’ program that are grounded in reality and the needs of our economy; one that doesn’t hurt U.S. workers,” Powell said last week after meeting with Mexican Cabinet officials at the State Department.

Yet, if a guest worker program may be more more acceptable to conservative Republicans than a broad amnesty, it is not viewed as a panacea by those at the other end of the political spectrum.

Immigrant advocates will be pushing to ensure that any such program does not infringe on workers’ basic rights or create a tier of employees who are vulnerable to exploitation in the workplace.

“I think there’s a lot of nervousness about guest workers,” cautioned Cecilia Munoz, vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights group. “The real excitement is about legalization.”