WASHINGTON — President George W. Bush told a Spanish-language television interviewer Thursday that he supports offering temporary legal status to immigrants who want jobs that go unfilled by United States citizens.

Bush, who says the United States should find a more humane way to treat immigrants said the card would provide temporary legal status for undocumented immigrants or those who want to come to the United States to work. But he said he would not offer amnesty.

“I recognize that people are coming here to work,” Bush said in a White House interview with Univision. “And while they’re doing jobs that aren’t filled by Americans, I think there should be a temporary worker program and a card that helps the workers and employers who want them.”…

Spellings: “We do envision that [the Bush guest worker plan] would be open to any type of employee and any type of employer, such as nurses, teachers, high-tech workers, low-skilled workers. This is a concept that can apply broadly”

Asked “Will the children of “guest workers” automatically become citizens?”, her response was: “Anyone who is born in the United States is presumed to be a citizen, and we do not support changing that. So I guess the answer is yes.”

“I think [the American public has] too much compassion to tell our law-enforcement people to go out there and uproot those 8 million [illegal aliens here] — some of whom might have been here 8 or 12 years, who got kids here that are American citizens — and to send them out of the country.”

Neither Bush nor the two senior administration officials who briefed the media Tuesday [in January 2004], however, made any suggestion that employers wishing to bring in workers from overseas would be required to first offer wages high enough to attract American workers. The only specific requirement that the senior officials mentioned was that the job offer meet the minimum wage. At the federal minimum of $5.15 per hour, a full-time worker earns $10,712 per year, well under the official poverty line for a family of three of $15,260.

It’s logical that the White House didn’t announce any other wage protection measures. After all, if employers were to be required to pay the current going rate for U.S. workers, they might as well hire current U.S. workers. So, why then would employers need a massive influx of foreign temporary workers? In other words, rules that would be effective at keeping up the wages of workers would undermine the fundamental goal of this plan.

Remittances rose to four-fifths the value of oil exports in the first half of the year, according to the Bank of Mexico. Remittances have surpassed foreign investment and tourism revenues, and are the second-largest source of foreign income, behind oil.