Just in time for tomorrow’s markup of Arlen Specter’s immigration bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Heritage Foundation has come out with a set of principles that need to guide any consideration of guestworker programs. Now, I’ve said before and say again that no guestworker program has ever worked, or can ever work. But if the solons in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body are going to debate the issue, then the Heritage piece, written by Ed Meese and Matt Spaulding, is a good place to start. It endorses the “enforcement first” approach, also favored by House Republicans: “there should be measurable border security, internal enforcement and program infrastructure timetables, benchmarks, and goals that must be met in order to proceed with the implementation of a temporary worker program.” It insists that temporary workers really be temporary–including making sure that “children born to temporary workers while in the United States are not automatically United States citizens.” Since these and Heritage’s other principles don’t have the remotest chance of passing, I think we can look forward to Heritage’s opposition to whatever chimerical guestworker bill (if any) comes out of the Senate.