Past has cautionary lessons for guest-worker programs

As church faithful light altar candles and Spanish-language hymns echo down hard-tile hallways, a group of Mexican elders huddles inside La Placeta Catholic church here. The 10 men are former participants in a guest-worker program that ended in 1964 - and they are still seeking pay they say never got.

"Each of us is still owed thousands of dollars by the US or Mexican government ... we don't know which," says Vicente de la Rosa Hernandez. In the early 1960s, he picked strawberries, tomatoes, and lettuce as one of 4 million Mexican participants in the so-called bracero program. To make sure Mr. Hernandez and his colleagues exited the country, US authorities gave 10 percent of their pay to the Mexican government, which the workers could retrieve only by returning.

Mr. Hernandez is now an undocumented alien living at the local Delores Homeless Mission. And today, with President Bush urging Congress to create a new guest-worker program, his tale highlights some of the cautionary lessons that similar programs in the US and Europe hold.

Among them, experts say:

• Such programs are often set up with the needs of employers in mind - making workers vulnerable to exploitation.

• Even if guest workers aren't put officially on a path to permanent residency, many stay in the host nation for good.

• The creation of a new legal status for guest workers doesn't necessarily slow illegal immigration.

For Mr. Bush, the guest-worker initiative is designed as a compromise that will not grant amnesty to illegal workers, but will formally acknowledge the presence of millions of them. And it asks employers to treat them like other American workers.

But despite the promise of steady work and legal status, the prevailing sentiment among immigrants is distrust. "We feel we trusted the system and got burned, so we do not feel like going through the same thing again," says Hernandez.

Under the plan Bush outlined, illegal immigrants already in the US could apply for a three-year work permit, which would be renewable at least once. Workers in foreign countries who have been offered jobs here could also participate. But neither group would receive special consideration for permanent residence or citizenship.

Supporters of the Bush plan say much has been incorporated from past mistakes and successes from the bracero program to the 1986 amnesty plan, which legalized about 3 million people. Those include better controls for employers and workers.

Critics worry there are no cap on the number of immigrants that can take advantage of the Bush plan, that there is no way to get workers to go home at the end of their stay, and that border problems will remain difficult from crossings attempted by those too afraid to trust the new law. The track record abroad is not promising, they add.

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