Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) noted that President Obama didn’t call for a temporary worker program for low skill laborers to enter the country as part of immigration reform in his State of the Union address on Wednesday.
Graham said at a Senate immigration hearing that the dispute over how to handle future workers was “if I had to bet where this thing would run into a real roadblock.” Labor unions are suspicious of any kind of guest worker program that might displace American jobs or push down wages, while agricultural companies and other industries say immigrant workers are needed to do jobs Americans refuse to take.
“Temporary workers are needed in the future, a legal source of labor for American employers,” Graham said. “And the goal is not to displace an American worker, you can only get a temporary worker when there is no American at a competitive wage.”
