But one thing his program is not, the president stresses, is amnesty?EUR??,,????'??+the word that stops debate on Capitol Hill about changing the present system.

Landscape contractors and groundskeepers are pinched by the current rules, which limit immigrant labor (for the industry) to 66,000 a year. The cap prevents businesses from growing, many landscapers say.

?EUR??,,????'??There is a major misperception that by hiring H-2B workers, we?EUR??,,????'???re taking jobs away from Americans,?EUR??,,????'?? Dan Foley of the Professional Landcare Network (PLANET) said. ?EUR??,,????'??These are jobs that Americans will not take. The lack of guest workers actually winds up hurting companies that then may have to lay off American supervisors or managers.?EUR??,,????'??

Foley is a landscape contractor in Massachusetts. He said he would be able to hire more Americans and buy more American-made power equipment if more foreign workers were allowed to enter the country.

One current proposal would let 400,000 aliens work in the United States for up to six years. After that, they either must leave or be in the pipeline for a green card, which denotes lawful permanent residency.

Many stress that enforcement can’t only happen at the border but in the country’s interior, as well. That means cracking down on businesses hiring illegal immigrants?EUR??,,????'??+often for pay below the U.S. minimum wage.

“We will enforce those laws throughout our land, better interior enforcement depends on better worksite enforcement,” Bush said.

Bush cited “Operation Rollback,” which he called the largest worksite enforcement case in U.S. history that involved the arrest of illegal workers and criminal charges brought against employers like WalMart.

But a recent government report suggests that employers who hire undocumented workers have little to fear from federal law enforcement.

The study from the U.S. Government Accountability Office in August found that the number of fines issued to employers for knowingly hiring illegal workers has plummeted, from 417 in 1999 to just three in 2004. ?EUR??,,????'?? (Operation Rollback took place in 2003.)

And arrests of unauthorized workers dropped 84 percent from 1999 to 2003, the report noted.