Do citizens really want these jobs?

Landscaping is another industry transformed by immigrant labor, even in states as far from the border as North Carolina.

Keith Martin, who owns a Raleigh-area landscape business, says the native-born Americans he encounters don't want to do the type of jobs he routinely gives to immigrants.

"Through my experience, Americans don't want to do this type of work, no matter what you pay them," says Mr. Martin, who runs a small shop with a trailer of mowers and hedge trimmers.

This doesn't prompt him to support Bush's guest worker idea, but it's the current reality of a business that involves laboring in the oppressive heat of Dixie, trimming curbs of suburban ranch houses and keeping the flower beds at local high-tech firms looking healthy.

In Bush's plan, illegal immigrants already in the US could apply for a three-year work permit, which would be renewable at least once. By giving legal status to millions already working in the fringes of the US economy, observers say, Bush's plan is to help ease labor shortages, improve working conditions, and stabilize wages paid to previously illegal immigrants.

But with the president scheduled to meet Monday with Mexican President Vicente Fox, the merits of the plan are a topic of hot debate.

"This is really a far bigger issue than just who gets low income jobs in immigration and border states," says Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies. "There are no numerical limits on these guest workers or what sector of the economy the jobs apply to. If employers can bypass American workers and not have to offer better wages and conditions ... the consequences to the American workplace could impact everyone."

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, there are more than 5.5 million working immigrants in America - legal and illegal - who lack high school education. Eighteen percent are in agriculture, 18 percent in construction, 16 percent in retail, 23 percent in manufacturing, 7 in business services/repair and 6 percent in personal services from maids to limo drivers.

"When we have 18 million Americans who can't find full-time jobs, it seems ludicrous to even be considering a program to import more foreign workers," says Rosemary Jencks of Numbers USA, an immigration reduction organization.

Kate Bronfenbrenner, a labor expert at Cornell University, says you can't draw a one-to-one comparison between the estimated 7 million illegal immigrants and the ranks of the US unemployed.

Some jobs categories are growing fast, she says, and they are often low-paying ones such as nurses' aides and housecleaners. "It's not true that Americans aren't working in them. There are just are plenty of those jobs to go around."

She worries, however, that Bush's plan tilts power heavily to employers, since the guest workers are not granted permanent residency. "Bush has established a program that gives employers the opportunity to exploit immigrant workers to an even greater degree."

• Patrik Jonsson and Mark Trumbull contributed to this report from Raliegh and Boston.

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