With President Bush’s visit to the U.S.-Mexico border Monday the immigration debate heated up once again. At issue in most of the arguments were two things—what are the costs and benefits of immigrants to the economy and what would be the implication of having “guest workers” rather than immigrants on a firm path toward citizenship.

On the National Review Online Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies wrote a piece criticizing Bush’s mixed signals on immigration. For Krikorian the focus of immigration reform should be “to reassert control over the immigration system and establish legal status as a labor standard.”

Byron York in another piece on the National Review Online looked at a new study from the Heritage Foundation that tries to gage the economic cost of illegal immigration by looking at the cost of low-skilled workers to U.S taxpayers.

In a piece last week in the Lost Angeles Times Shannon O’Neil of the Council on Foreign Relations argues that demographic changes in Mexico might make the immigration debate mute. Due to falling birth rates and longer life expectancy, Mexico could have “5 million fewer new workers” in the next ten years.

The New York Times today warned Bush against trying to play to the immigration hawks while formulating a comprehensive immigration policy. The editorial was particularly concerned that under some of the current plans the path to legal citizenship would become so costly that most immigrants would never be able to afford full legal status.

Arguing along the same lines in the Los Angeles Times John Sweeny and Pablo Alvarado warn that anything less than a pathway to full citizenship would result in slave-like conditions for immigrants.