The Guest Worker Program is a program that has been proposed many times, including by U.S. President George W. Bush's administration, as a way to permit U.S. employers to sponsor non-U.S. citizens as laborers for approximately three years, to be deported afterwards if they have not yet obtained a green card.
Over 1,000,000 guest workers reside in the U.S. The largest program, the H-1B visa, has 650,000 workers in the U.S., and the second-largest, the L-1 visa, has 350,000. Many other United States visas exist for guest workers as well, including the H-2A visa, which allows farmers to bring in an unlimited number of agricultural guest workers.
The United States ran a Mexican guest-worker program in the period 1942–1964, known as the Bracero Program.
An article in The New Republic criticized a guest worker program by equating the visiting workers to second-class citizens who would never be able to gain citizenship and would have fewer residential rights than American citizens.
Famous quotes containing the words guest, worker and/or program:
“Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,
But he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one
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—Edgar Albert Guest (1881–1959)
“Helicon: “It takes one day to make a senator and ten years to make a worker.”
Caligula: “But I am afraid that it takes twenty years to make a worker out of a senator.””
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“Treat the cow kindly, boys; remember she’s a lady—and a mother.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)