Maybe I'm just wrong here, but it seems to be to be rather disingenuous for Congress to simultaneously extend unemployment benefits for unemployed Americans, while at the same time continuing to allow guest worker programs to bring in immigrants from other countries to work here in the US.

Am I missing something here? The argument to support guest worker programs was that these immigrants were taking jobs Americans wouldn't do (never bought the argument to begin with). Well, it seems to me that even if there was logic in that claim when our unemployment was below 4%, what little logic there was is surely gone now with unemployment over 7% and rising.

I can't help but assume that surely there are now plenty of Americans who would very happily take those jobs we are importing immigrants to fill. So why is no one talking about this?

Thoughts? Am I totally off base here?

To me immigration should be a two-prong approach, i.e. skilled vs unskilled. Re skilled meaning immigrants with a college degree, specifically in the math and science areas. Unemployment in the U.S. for those 25 and over w/a college degree currently stands @ 3.5%. Before the recession started it was at 2%. Once we are out of this recession, I expect it to drop back to 2%. 22% of the current U.S population has at least an undergraduate degree. Our universities, the best in the world, are running close to 100% occupancy, meaning we would have to build more universities....that takes time. Add the fact we are not producing enough graduates in the math and science areas. We need to target immigrants from Asia, Europe, South America, to fill critical gaps, similar to the H1-B visa program (spend a little time in Silicon Valley and you will understand). The nice side benefit is that these immigrants will be paid well, they will actually pay taxes, buy homes, and help expand the economy. The company I just recently retired from is still scrambling and competing for finite resources on college campuses for those in the above disciplines.

Re unskilled - I wish I had a better answer to just putting up a fence from San Diego to the Gulf of Mexico. Granted these immigrants keep prices low, but on the flip side add significant costs to various govt programs, while paying very little, or no Fed income tax at all.

instead of taking responsibility to govern on principle. Typical, really....

Trying to be clear on terminology, isn’t guest worker the term used in the latest proposed plan to bridge between illegals and those with green cards? Or are you referring to the impact of a large variety of work alphabet soups visas? There has been a variety of different guest worker programs over the years. But both  legal and illegal workers have an impact on the labor sector of the economy.

A study of the depression of the 1930s will show that the government made strong steps to lock down the borders. They even made an effort to round up aliens and deport them (mainly back to Mexico). But of course today their political usefulness (primarily to Dems), their political power (primarily against Republicans) and business’s desire for cheaper labor has created an atmosphere where both sides are to culpable. Democrat labor may soon quit giving the Dems a pass on their catering to immigrants and the Republicans may rediscover their spines to help. But protectionism is very much a double edged sword, especially more today than ever. If it were not for the recession we would have seen a large opening of the borders. Now I’m not so sure. Immigration and border security will come up again.

There are large numbers of immigrants self deporting due to the economy.  However, I am sure the trend will reverse when the economy turns around.

of wealthy Califoirnians emmigrating mainly to nearby states to flee the mass immigration.

Obama owes too much to certain groups that are tied into "immigrant rights."  

It is true there is some conflict with other supporters.  For example, immigrant rights groups often collide with organized labor.  However, since labor associates itself with the left no matter what, they won't abandon Obama for kowtowing to the other constitutents.  Labor is too solidly in the camp to have to worry about.

On the other hand, he has to keep Hispanics happy because they are a growing constituency.  Since they are a part of labor, they can be a moderating faorce in his favor with the unions

right on sins, right on

let's have our college students do the work on summer programs, as part of payback for the billions OBAMA is going to give them. It will certainly build their character as most of our youth have gone gay and soft in the last generation. It's time to build up a youth with character and sense of worth, instead of spoiled brats we have now.

and let's carry what you started one step further, these illegals that infest our countryside weaken our infrasture, we should bill or freeze the assets of the nations that they come from.

and one step further, let's stop all the hundreds of billions of dollars of free health care, welfare, and other social care that they steal out of our pockets.

and one more thing, for every drug runner arrested here, the death chair. And for the nation that they are from, freeze their assets until they put together a program that controls free flowing drugs.

drugs pollute the minds of our youth and kill them.

      The only guest worker program enacted into law that I recall applied only to farm workers and permitted US employers to sponsor foreign workers for three years only if they made a good faith effort to first hire US citizens but could not do so. Although Bush made some changes to the regs for this program in December, I do not think he changed that provision.
A bill to extend the program to any service worker has been proposed but I do not think it has been passed unless I missed it.

    So if this is correct, your sensible concern is not a problem bc by definition the foreign workers could be hired only if US workers were not available.

It's very early in this administration, and it has a lot on it's plate. I think they'll get to the issue of H1B visas.

Second, I'm afraid a lot of those jobs are for skills not too many Americans have. Americans don't have the education, and the main reason for that is that the education through the graduate level will probably put them $60-90 thousand dollars in the hole before they have their first jobs. That's because the government has made student loans the centerpiece of their education policy.  

It's not just a poor, short-sighted government education policy, it's that universities have also been allowed free reign to raise their tuitions to so as to collect more and more easy money from those loans. If the government's policy was to make loans the centerpiece of paying for education, it very certainly had to limit the universities' raising tuition to collect them. Now people look at the debt they will have and give up going to college.  

So, the results are we have a severe shortage of people with high level skills. Whereas India has a polytech University system that is top  notch, and paid for by the government. Sometimes government "interference" is good.