yearning to breathe free," but providing an ample labor supply. "It's all become an issue of the price of labor -- how it will be regulated, and how much it will cost employers," says Lourdes Gouveia, who studies immigration at the University of Nebraska in Omaha.     There's no reason to believe that the flow of people across the border will stop, or can be stopped by draconian enforcement. According to Geneva-based Migrant Watch, migration is not just a US/Mexico phenomenon.  Worldwide, over 130 million people live outside the countries in which they were born.  And for the US and Mexico, immigration is a permanent fact of life, according to Mexico's National Population Council, which concludes that by 2030 the Mexican-born U.S. population will at least double to 16 million to 18 million. "Migration between Mexico and the United States is a permanent, structural phenomenon," it reports. "It is built on real factors, ranging from geography, economic inequality and integration, and the intense relationship between the two countries, that make it inevitable."     Immigration policy doesn't affect the number of people coming across so much as their status once they're here.  And key to that status is the ability of immigrant workers to organize.  The difficulties faced by guest workers who want to do that is the basis for AFL-CIO opposition to the expansion of existing programs.  The federation calls instead for labor protections within those programs that already exist.     But John Wilhelm, president of the Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees International Union, who also heads the AFL-CIO's immigration committee, says "I don't think it's possible to have labor protections for contract workers."  Pointing to the fact that even among US citizen workers, one in twenty lose their job in the course of union organizing campaigns, he concludes that "to think the law will protect people whose right to stay in the country ends with their job is not living in the real world."  If guest worker programs expand, "tens of thousands of workers would be [made] hostage, and ultimately destroy wage and working conditions in the hospitality industry," he adds.  Last year, the union's convention called instead for a broad legalization and citizenship program, and for repealing employer sanctions.  That reflects the position the AFL-CIO itself adopted in 1998 in an historic shift towards a new pro-immigrant policy.     The debate in Washington, however, revolves not around what workers want, but over what is possible under a Republican administration, with Republican control of the House of Representatives.  Despite recent efforts by Bush to reach out to more conservative unions in the AFL-CIO, labor has little to no traction with the administration around guest workers and amnesty.     Last year, unions interested in amnesty tried to convince the Mexican government to advocate that position in negotiations with Bush. In June, Wilhelm, UFW President Arturo Rodriguez and other labor leaders went to Mexico City to talk to Fox.  "We said we were inalterably opposed to guest worker programs," Wilhelm recalled.  "We don't want any program in which a worker's immigration status is attached to their job, and where there is no realistic path to legalization."  After the talks were over, Rodriguez told the press that "we've made it clear that without legalization there will be no new guest worker program or revision of the current guest worker. [Continue....]