The seductive appeal of the guest worker program

Various iterations of this program come and go, but the gist seems to be this:

- Come here for 3 years.
- If we like you, stay another 3.
- Go home.
- Wait a while.
- Try again for another 3 years.

It seems like a reasonable plan from a pure chess-pieces-on-the-table perspective.

What a program like this will really do is bring back the bad old days against which the likes of Upton Sinclair railed against in The Jungle.

Some people may think that's an extreme comparison and though I don't want to concede the point, I think that if I soften it and say that on the labor spectrum, where the far left is U.S.A. 2006 and the far right is The Jungle, most will agree that a guest worker program clearly pushes the arrow to the right.

Capitalism is a pervasive system. Without checks, it's really quite horrible. That's why there are all kinds of checks on its unrestricted implementation in this country and elsewhere. But you can't really check it too well. It's like a pouring gallon and gallons of water into a leaky wooden barrel. The barrel has small leaks here and there, but the water always tries to find its way out of the largest leak. Plug one leak and you just made it so that the water goes out a different hole. Or, the pressure will build up that the water creates its own hole somewhere else.

This guest worker program is a new hole. "Pure" capitalism will take over the guest worker program. Pure, unrestricted capitalism extracts terrible costs from most of its participants.

I'm no economics expert, but common sense tells me that one of the best checks against capitalism (aside from government regulation) is the worker. A worker can always get up and walk away from Job A to get a better Job B. If I'm not getting paid enough today at my company (or I don't like something else like benefits, hours, management), I can walk away and get another job. Guest workers won't have this option. One of the most powerful weapons in their aresenal is taken away from them.

Employers surely know this. And as good capitalists, they will take advantage. These guest workers will be paid little, receive little benefits and generally be in big trouble.

Can a guest worker program succeed? I don't know, but I surely have no faith in this government today coming up with a good program.