Nightline E-mail: September 5

W A S H I N G T O N, September 5 -- For many American business owners, filling jobs is not as easy as placing an ad in the newspaper. For jobs that pay low wages and demand high physical labor, there are simply not enough Americans willing to apply. This has long been true in the seasonal work of agriculture. But in recent years, that situation has become a reality in more and more industries. In factories of many types. In construction. In landscaping. In restaurants and hotels. Many of these jobs are now filled by illegal immigrants. But for the employers who hire illegal workers there are significant risks. Many of them would prefer to hire legal workers. But how?

The government provides one way: the temporary worker program. Some American companies now go to Mexico to recruit workers through this program. It is not a perfect system, but it does mean the employers can be sure they will fill the jobs and the employees can be sure they will earn American dollars without risking their lives crossing the border illegally. Currently, the temporary worker program is a small-scale, complicated plan that is mostly limited to seasonal laborers.

But Mexican President Vicente Fox and President George Bush would like to change that. Today Fox and Bush will meet at the White House, and follow a day of high-level meetings with a black tie dinner, the first official State Dinner of Bush's presidency. Expanding the temporary worker visa program is one of the items at the top of their agenda. But no one expects an immigration deal to be finalized today.

President Fox and President Bush are both new presidents whose friendship dates back to Bush's days as Texas governor and Fox's days as a prominent Mexican businessman. Both men place improving U.S.-Mexican immigration at the top of their foreign policy agendas. But expanding the temporary worker visa program is politically thorny in both countries. One of the biggest problems is what to do about the roughly 3.5 million Mexicans already living and working in the U.S. illegally. Despite early optimism from both countries, negotiations on this topic have dragged on for months.