The Senate’s vote yesterday to cut the number of temporary worker visas in half knocks a big hole in the comprehensive immigration reform proposal now being debated in Congress. As I’ve written in a recent Free Trade Bulletin, allowing a sufficient number of foreign-born workers to enter the country legally to meet the obvious demand of our labor market is absolutely necessary if we want to reduce illegal immigration.

Ignoring our policy advice, the Senate voted 74–24 to adopt an amendment by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D‑N.M.) that would cut the number of annual temporary “Y visas” from 400,000 to 200,000. That number is almost certainly too low to provide the workers that our growing economy needs to fill jobs at the lower end the skill ladder for which there simply are not enough Americans available to fill them. The result, if the lower cap stands, will be continued illegal immigration.

The irony is that many of the senators voting to drastically reduce temporary visas are the same senators who warn that we should not repeat the mistake of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. That bill legalized 2.7 million illegal immigrants but was unable to stop more immigrants from entering the country illegally despite beefed-up enforcement. The real flaw of the 1986 law, however, was its complete lack of any temporary worker program to provide for future, legal workers.

By adopting the Bingaman amendment, a majority of senators have turned the current reform effort into something much more like the failed 1986 law. They have kicked the illegal immigration can down the road, leaving it to a future Congress to find a lasting solution.