2007.05.31: May 31, 2007: Headlines: Figures: COS - Somalia: Politics: Congress: Immigration: Oshkosh Northwestern: Tom Petri says Keeping the nation's borders secure while helping businesses to find the employees they need is part of the reasonable solution needed in immigration reform
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2007.05.31: May 31, 2007: Headlines: Figures: COS - Somalia: Politics: Congress: Immigration: Oshkosh Northwestern: Tom Petri says Keeping the nation's borders secure while helping businesses to find the employees they need is part of the reasonable solution needed in immigration reform
Tom Petri says Keeping the nation's borders secure while helping businesses to find the employees they need is part of the reasonable solution needed in immigration reform
"My sense is that if people had confidence that going forward we had a workable system of legal immigration … people would have better ideas about how to sort through who's already here," Petri said. Petri said he would support a program that would create a guest worker status for some immigrants. That idea, he said, is not unfamiliar to Wisconsin, which has had such a program in the past to bring in agricultural workers. Guest workers make sense for industries like agriculture and tourism. Congressman Tom Petri of Wisconsin served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Somalia in the 1960's.
Tom Petri says Keeping the nation's borders secure while helping businesses to find the employees they need is part of the reasonable solution needed in immigration reform
Petri OK with guest worker idea
By Bethany K. Warner
of The Northwestern
Keeping the nation's borders secure while helping businesses to find the employees they need is part of the reasonable solution needed in immigration reform, Congressman Tom Petri, R-Fond du Lac, said Wednesday.
An immigration bill currently in the U.S. Senate that would hire new border guards and install fencing along the United States/Mexican border, create a guest worker program to allow immigrants a temporary legal status in country and give opportunities for some 12 million illegal immigrants to gain legal status.
"My sense is that if people had confidence that going forward we had a workable system of legal immigration … people would have better ideas about how to sort through who's already here," Petri said.
Petri said he would support a program that would create a guest worker status for some immigrants. That idea, he said, is not unfamiliar to Wisconsin, which has had such a program in the past to bring in agricultural workers.
Guest workers make sense for industries like agriculture and tourism.
But immigration reform is also needed to ensure that employers have an adequate supply of skilled foreign workers. Those workers fill the need for skilled employees in technology industries and other sectors that can not be met by the American workforce, he said.
Petri said limiting access to those workers could impede the country's ability to compete in the global business world as companies might build in other countries if the skilled workers they need cannot come to the United States.
"We're going to lose out as a country if more of these networking people move off shore," Petri said.
Bethany K. Warner: (920) 426-6668 or bwarner@thenorthwestern.com.
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Story Source: Oshkosh Northwestern
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Figures; COS - Somalia; Politics; Congress; Immigration
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