These 'guests' are welcome

The term "guest workers" is a bit precious. The image that comes to mind is that of Disney's dancing candlesticks singing "Be our guest" to a corps of worn-out farm workers as they trudge home from the fields.

But the idea behind the term is a solid one.

Currently, Rep. Chris Cannon of Utah is one of the lawmakers pushing for a national "guest list." We urge him to push ahead. As currently conceived, the Agriculture Job Opportunity, Benefits and Security Act would simplify the process for nonresidents to get an H-2A work visa. And it would allow employers and the government to better monitor the money and movements of employees.

And "monitoring" is a major — a necessary — component of the new act. Currently, to paraphrase Mark Twain, everyone talks about the illegal immigration debacle, but no one does anything about it. Rep. Cannon has shown a willingness to do, not just talk.

Not everyone, of course, will be tickled with the new approach. The act does grant legal status to people who more or less stole their way into the country in the dead of night. But with terrorism expanding on all fronts and the number of undocumented workers in the United States on the rise, something must be done to tug the situation under control.

Besides, the new program will be patterned on a similar plan that was impressively successful 60 years ago. Although the old "Bracero" program was targeted at times by watchdogs for its abuses and problems, the program actually stemmed the tide of undocumented workers — especially in the grape and lettuce industries of California — raised the lifestyle and sights of thousands of Mexican farm laborers and kept money in the bank and food on the table not only for the workers, but for Middle America as well. For 20 years the "braceros" (the word is Spanish for "one who uses his arms") did the heavy lifting in the California fields and eventually created the Farm Workers Union headed by Cesar Chavez.

The time for complaining about immigration is over. The time for action has come.

We urge Congress to chart a course and move full steam ahead to help America's current "unwelcome guests" become the nation's "guest workers." Cannon has found a very plausible solution to what has seemed to be an implausible situation.