Two days ago I wrote that the guest worker program in the Senate’s immigration bill would probably be the first provision to be changed or killed. That’s exactly what has happened.
Yesterday the Senate overwhelmingly voted to cut the guest worker program in half. Now instead of 400,000 immigrants receiving visas annually to work temporarily in the United States, only 200,000 will. The votes to reduce the number came from Democrats who see the guest worker program as a repeat of the bracero program intended to provide cheap labor to big business and Republicans who see the whole bill as soft on illegal immigration. Pro-business Republicans voted to keep the number at 400,000.
See how the vote broken down along party lines here. See Mother Jones massive and excellent feature on immigration, “Exodus,” here.