Matt Yglesias and a mysterious Economist blogger (who is not my partner) agree: A temporary worker program isn’t any more likely to fly with conservatives than an increase in legal immigration quotas.
The question, then, is whether there’s reason to think that greater reliance on a guest-worker program (or, to be more precise, on a large expansion of current law’s very modest guest-worker allowances) would defuse some of the opposition.
None of the things that bother people about immigration would be substantially less bothersome in a guest worker scheme than under a more liberal immigration regime. If anything, you’d see the reverse.
This is worth considering, but I’m going to cling to the conventional wisdom here. The argument posits a uniformity and consistency in anti-immigrant sentiment that just isn’t there. Guest worker programs poll well; increasing legal immigration quotas polls dismally. In this Time poll, “79 percent say they favor a guest worker program that would allow illegal immigrants to remain in the U.S. for a fixed period of time.” A CBS poll finds 66 percent supporting guest workers; but that same poll finds that only 20 percent support more legal immigration. Senator Phil Gramm, who is pro- guest worker, here argues that a plan legalizing illegal workers would pass “over my cold, dead political body.” UPenn Law Professor Howard F. Chang discusses the appeal of guest workers in terms of political feasibility in this study, helpfully titled “Liberal Ideals and Political Feasibility.”
The point to keep in mind here is that we are debating unskilled immigration; we’re talking about poor people, and the anti-immigrant right has been extremely successful in portraying poor foreigners as people who want to sponge off haplessly generous Americans. Ask an Iowan about undocumented workers, and count the seconds until emergency rooms come up. As Time reports: “Americans’ biggest concerns about illegal immigration appear to be economic: 61% of those polled say they are very concerned about the cost of providing health care and education to illegal immigrants.”
It’s not just that they’re brown; it’s that they’re brown and want to use your stuff. Let more people in, the argument goes, and they’ll end up on welfare, their kids crowding your schools, their parents crowding your hospitals. You could argue that the economic concerns are just masking mass racism, but that doesn’t explain why guest worker programs–which preclude the possibility of their beneficiaries ending up on the dole–poll so well. Committed xenophobes should be more consistent in their distaste for mixing with the Other.
Because we do not live in a country of consistent xenophobes, we will see expanded skilled immigration both on a temporary and permanent basis. We’re going to see more H-1Bs, and we might move from a family-based to a point-based system with more slots provided to engineers and the like. The latter will likely only cement the idea that skilled workers are safe and unskilled workers are fiscally threatening.
The resource argument isn’t necessarily racist. Living in high growth central Florida, there are lots of NIMBYesque groups trying to “limit growth”. These are mainly white people trying to stop other (mainly white) people from moving here.
While I recognize the dynamic may be very different for anti immigration folks, an “anti-growth” mentality may play a part in the anti-immigration movement.