Guesting Games

I'm broadly in agreement with what Megan has to say about the quest worker question. As Megan says, for those of us who would like to see a more liberal immigration regime, it's really not clear what problem this is supposed to solve. Politically, the imperative at this point is clearly reducing the number of illegal immigrants. The question, then, is whether this can be done in a humane and pragmatic way that involves a path to citizenship for some of the people already here, or whether it's going to be a purely punitive issue.

However that shakes out, if we can get to a point where the government's doing a reasonably good job of keeping the number of people who actually come to the US to something in the vicinity of the number of people who are allowed to come then, maybe, the conditions will be set to increase the volume of legal immigration. Having some or all of that increase come in the form of a guest worker program only seems to create additional practical and ideological challenges with little upside.