Not Now, Not Like This

Two reasons not to pass a guest worker program now, one from National Review (their July 17th print edition cover story, "Mexico, Heal Thyself"):

The solutions, then, aren't especially complicated:End the state monopolies, desocialize agriculture, simplify tax and labor laws, decentralize and improve the education system.

Mexican President Vicente Fox came in promising reform but it hasn't happened:

Whatever the explanation, Fox has been a disappointment. If the US Congress comes around to passing anything like Bush's guest-worker plan, Fox's lasting contribution will be to have helped institutionalize the forces that militate against reform. This would be no service to his countrymen.

The other is from the WSJ:

Buried deep in the Senate's legislation--which would create a guest worker program--is a requirement that employers who hire guest workers pay them a "prevailing wage." First enacted in 1931 in the Davis Bacon Act to insulate unionized Northern contractors from competition with black migrant workers from the South for federal contracts, federal prevailing wage laws have long served the interests of Big Labor. Expanding Davis Bacon provisions to cover guest workers would set a dangerous precedent for extending prevailing-wage mandates to other private employers. It's hard to see how increasing labor costs to give organized labor a leg up is good for either the economy or the Republican Party, but then it's a predictable outcome from a divided political party that has lost sight of its small-government principles.

Agreement on at least this aspect.