What policy changes do congressional leaders recommend as employment plummets?

In Washington, D.C., today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is plotting an attack on the surviving jobs of American workers.

"I'm going to do comprehensive immigration reform," Reid told reporters last week. "I'm not going to do it piecemeal. That's an excuse for everybody to do too little.

"We're going to do it all at once, and we're going to have comprehensive immigration reform that will include taking care of our borders, a decent guest-worker program, bringing the 11 million people out of the shadows, doing something that's so important with the employer sanctions bill that really is a catch-22 for everyone and a number of other things," said Reid. "We're going to do it all in one piece of legislation, not give people an excuse that they voted for one thing and think that they're through with it."

What Reid means by "bringing 11 million people out of the shadows" is making illegal immigrants legal -- thus rewarding illegal behavior and encouraging further illegal immigration.

What he means by a "decent guest-worker program" is giving employers the power to import foreign workers into the United States and keep those workers laboring here in a status that is inferior to a free American citizen or permanent legal resident.

These imported "guest workers" would not have the right to sell, or withhold, their labor at any time, place and price they choose -- like real Americans do. Such workers would be subject to federal laws and regulations meant to hold them captive to the employers who imported them.

Such workers would be half-slave, half-free -- and part of a country dividing against itself.

What Harry Reid is proposing is an assault on American workers and the principle of free labor. It is as contrary to the American way of life as the federal government owning General Motors.