Agricultural Personnel Management Program
University of California

5/9/01 News Report -- The Arizona Republic

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Phil Gramm and Rep. Silvestre Reyes didn't just line up on opposite sides of an issue that is looming as the next big congressional debate on immigration. The two powerful Texans squared off on Tuesday for battle over conflicting proposals for guest worker programs intended to legalize millions of immigrants who entered the country illegally.

Gramm, a Republican, and Reyes, a Democrat, spoke at a conference on border trade that drew business and government leaders from across the U.S.-Mexican border. The two men agreed on one thing: that the warm relationship between President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox offers a historic opportunity to forge agreement on migrant worker issues that stir passions on both sides of the border.

Reyes demanded a program that would not only legitimize workers but also put them on a track toward citizenship.

"That is the legalization that we must have or the Hispanic Caucus will be opposed to any kind of proposal like this," said Reyes, who before his 1996 election to Congress was a top Border Patrol official.

Gramm said that although he wanted illegal immigrants to be able to legitimize their status, he would insist that they return to their homelands after a specified tenure as guest workers.

"A guest worker program is not an immigration program," Gramm said. "You can go back to your home country and apply for immigration. But through a guest worker program you don't get amnesty or permanent resident status or citizenship."

Gramm declared that the program favored by Reyes and a diverse group of business, labor and immigrant advocacy groups "will never happen."

"It will pass over my cold, dead political body," Gramm said, repeating an oath he made last year.

Gramm said he believes that President Bush will take his side in the controversy. But all sides are awaiting a guest worker proposal that is expected to emerge from U.S.-Mexican talks initiated by Bush and Fox. The proposal is expected by September, when the two presidents are scheduled to meet in Washington.

Immigrant advocate Cecilia Muñoz on Tuesday agreed with Reyes. Muñoz, vice president of the National Council of La Raza, said basic fairness demands that Congress "give workers the ability to adjust their status and stay here permanently."

"It is very clear that immigrant workers, especially in the service sector, play an enormously important role in those industries, and an enormously important role in our economy," Muñoz said. "The laws are completely out of synch with our economy."

Although agribusiness has long lobbied to expand its workforce through an ambitious guest worker program, a coalition of other business groups is pressing a similar case. The coalition was formed by trade associations for businesses such as hotels, restaurants, meatpacking, landscaping, nursing homes and construction.

Those groups have formed the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, arguing that they have come to depend upon unskilled and semiskilled workers who are illegal immigrants. John Gay, coalition co-chairman, said his group favors "a mechanism to legalize those who are here so that they can get their green cards."

Green cards, which signify status as a permanent resident, are a step toward citizenship.

Joe Harper, the mayor of the Arizona border town of San Luis, said he fears that a guest worker program that stops short of full legalization will make workers vulnerable to unscrupulous employers. He said he wants to avoid repetition of abuses that were commonplace during the bracero program that brought Mexican workers to the United States from the 1940s to the 1960s.