Agricultural Personnel Management Program
University of California

Spurred on by the record-setting pace of migrant deaths in the scorching Arizona desert, a trio of the state's lawmakers last week launched the first Republican attempt at sweeping immigration reform since the issue was dropped by President Bush after Sept. 11.

Led by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the powerhouse behind last year's campaign finance reform, the lawmakers introduced a guest-worker bill [S. 1461 and H.R. 2899] that could allow millions of migrants to enter the United States, work for a time, then either return home or apply for permanent residency.

The bill also would allow many of the estimated 8 million illegal immigrants now in the country eventually to become legal.

"This is a very ambitious bill, there's no doubt about it," said John Gay, vice president for the American Hotel and Lodging Association, which supports the bill in principle but is waiting for bipartisan support before endorsing it.

"To solve the whole problem - millions of people here illegally and hundreds of thousands more coming each year - you have to give people a legal way to come, but you also have to figure out what to do with the people who are already here," he said.

But the measure was barely out of the box this week when its sponsors began lowering expectations for its political future.

"It will be tough going. There's no doubt about it," said U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who is sponsoring the bill along with McCain and Rep. Jim Kolbe, also a Republican from Arizona. Flake said that so far neither the chairman of the House immigration subcommittee, John Hostettler, R-Ind., nor Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. John Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., support the bill.

That the bill may not even get a committee hearing speaks to the fact that immigration is one of most divisive issues in the Republican Party, experts said.

"There is a real struggle going on right now that will have a major impact on the fortunes of the Republican Party," said Dan Griswold, a pro-immigration Republican and trade expert at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington.

The forces that led the three Arizona Republicans to introduce the bill, say people on both sides of the debate, show the urgent need to fix the country's complex, sometimes contradictory immigration system.

Over the past decade, stronger enforcement at border crossings in Texas and California has pushed more immigrants to cross the sweltering Arizona desert.

Migrant deaths in Arizona this year are already on track to beat last year's record of 145.

"No matter how hard-hearted someone might be in regards to illegal immigration, no one likes to see that kind of situation," Flake said. "There is no doubt that it adds urgency to the problem."

But it's in deciding how to solve the problem that many Republicans part ways.

The Arizonans' bill would allow employers to petition to bring in foreign workers, but only after available jobs were posted on a national registry and made available to U.S. citizens for at least 14 days. There would be no limit on the number of foreign workers who could enter the country. Instead, the cap would be determined by market demand.

Eventually, foreign workers could apply for permanent resident status - an option that would also be open to millions of undocumented workers now living in the United States.

Bill opponents say the country has already learned that technique won't work. During the 1980s, more than 2 million illegal immigrants were granted amnesty as a way to curb illegal immigration into the United States.

"What we learned is that an amnesty doesn't do anything to reduce the number of people coming into the country illegally. The only thing (the amnesty) did was encourage more people to come," said U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who said he adamantly opposes the approach taken by his Republican colleagues.

Tancredo said he is seeking to introduce a guest-worker bill, but it would not grant amnesty to workers already in the United States.