Byron Dorgan: “the discussion this morning is once again on a subject called guest workers. I don't happen to think we ought to have a…”

“the discussion this morning is once again on a subject called guest workers. I don't happen to think we ought to have a guest worker provision in this legislation. The discussion now is, if it exists in the legislation, what are the conditions under which guest workers can petition for citizenship, and so on and so forth. I hope we are not done with the question of whether there should be so-called guest workers or, as some call it, future flow, the soft- sounding words. They could call it tourism for all that matters. What this is about is grafting onto this bill to deal with the question of illegal immigrants coming into this country--because we have quotas, and those who come in illegally are a pretty serious problem, the 11 million or 12 million people we think are here illegally--this is grafting onto this bill that deals with illegal immigration a proposal that people who live outside this country and have not come to this country before now are to come into this country as so-called guest workers or future flow. What are those people going to do? They are going to come into this country and they are going to work. It is as if the 11 million or 12 million are not enough, we need more. The original proposition by the President was an unlimited number. The original proposition in the bill brought to the floor of the Senate was 400,000 a year, plus a 20-percent escalator. I tried to knock that out, and my amendment got clobbered, so I was unsuccessful.…”