Do citizens really want these jobs?

Scott Joyal says that if it weren't for illegal immigrants taking jobs that could have been his - first as a car washer or waiter, later in carpentry and construction - he would have had a lot easier time surviving financially over the past 10 years. The San Jose carpenter says he knows dozens of his colleagues who, like him, are also struggling to pay rent and keep food in the refrigerator because of competition from immigration.

It's a view that goes to one of the core questions raised by President Bush's proposal to let millions of illegal workers become legal "guest workers": Would they be stealing jobs that American citizens want and need?

Bush says no.

He calls it a "basic fact of life and economics" that some jobs being generated in America are ones citizens don't want to fill.

Yet that premise is controversial - in a slow job market in which millions are looking for work - and to many economists it is misleading. Many citizens will, and do, work side by side with immigrants who may be illegal in industries from meatpacking to hotels and landscaping. "Those workers are competing with US workers," says Dean Baker, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "It's simply not true that US workers won't take these jobs." But many, he concedes, won't take them at the going wage.

In the view of many economists, the question is less one of stealing jobs than of altering the balance in labor market. The influx of immigrants, legal and illegal, adds to the supply of low-cost labor and puts downward pressure on pay. The upside, for the US economy, is lower consumer prices and, in some cases, keeping some production at home that might otherwise shift overseas.

For example, what if instead of recognizing "guest workers" the government took a policy of aggressively weeding out illegal immigrants? The resulting upward pressure on wages might push some jobs in, say, meatpacking or agriculture out of the country. But in other cases, it might prod businesses to increase wages, expand the use of automation (such as in harvesting), and to pass higher costs along to consumers.

Gauging the precise impact of immigrants, especially the illegal ones for whom the guest worker program is designed, is tricky. And employer groups and groups favoring limits on immigration can come up with very different conclusions. In one 1997 study the National Research Council found that immigration depresses wages modestly for many lower-income workers - by perhaps 5 percent over 15 years.

To many on the ground, however, the impact feels large. Construction is one industry where Baker says pay scales have been hit the immigrant influx.

"I'm not against [immigrants]," says Mr. Joyal, the San Jose carpenter. "It just makes it difficult for native-born Americans to get jobs when undocumented aliens are lined up to get them first."

Since 1993, he says he has been turned down by carwashes, schools seeking janitors, restaurants, and hosts of construction jobs because immigrants got there first or underbid him.

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