Lino Garcia , a Venezuelan baseball player, has a seasonal visa that allows him to play with the Diamondbacks in the United States.

Benjie Sanders / Arizona Daily Star

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As Congress prepares to debate the merits of bringing in guest workers from other countries, hundreds of thousands of foreigners already legally teach in America's classrooms, nurse the sick in hospitals and tidy rooms in resorts.

Long before the clamor over rival guest-worker proposals reached Capitol Hill, people from all over the world had become a fixture in the U.S. labor force.

In the last fiscal year ending Sept. 30, about 640,000 foreigners received visas as guest or temporary workers, according to the most recent data from the U.S. State Department. The previous fiscal year, it was slightly more than 600,000. The numbers exclude family members who sometimes accompany guest workers to the United States.

Pinpointing how many guest workers are in the country at any given time is difficult because some visas are granted for seasonal work while others allow the holder to remain up to 10 years.

Using visas that allow them to work legally in the United States for months or years at a time, temporary workers have built railroads, harvested crops, cooked restaurant meals, researched cures for deadly diseases and entertained Americans as singers and athletes.

Now, guest workers are helping to rebuild the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast.

"Temporary workers always will play an important role in our economy," said Benjamin Johnson, director of the Immigration Policy Center in Washington, D.C. "The question is, will those workers be legal or illegal?"

Politicians on both sides of the immigration debate are pushing guest-worker programs — with varying numbers and lengths of stay — as part of broader plans that aim to take control of illegal immigration.

Johnson said the plans recognize that the number of temporary workers coming in through legal channels just isn't enough to meet the demand.

What's more, he noted, existing visa programs for temporary workers are restrictive and unwieldy, which turn off employers and emphasize the need for flexible immigration laws.

In studies released last week, the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute argues that any discussions on proposed guest-worker programs should take into account the nation's large-scale temporary worker system already in place.

The Washington, D.C., think tank says the nation's employers use temporary foreign labor "to work around the inflexibility and delays of the permanent immigration system."

The studies also show an increasing number of temporary workers and their family members becoming permanent legal residents, which the institute contends sends mixed messages.

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said employers use foreign temporary workers simply because it suits their business interests.

"It is the case of employers preferring to hire foreign labor for less wages. … It simply isn't true that Americans won't do the jobs," he said.

Whether in low-skilled or high-skilled jobs, Mehlman no-ted, the nation's employers long have used foreigners as substitutes for American workers. Current labor shortages in some industries are the result of poor government policies and "a failure to make working conditions and wages better" for U.S. workers, he said.

While Americans' views on the importation of foreign labor run the gamut, it is clear that employers are hiring guest workers legally faster than they can come. Among them are people such as Oded Nathan, a Canadian working as a school psychologist in the Phoenix area. In Tucson, professional baseball player Lino Garcia pursues his major league goal. The Arizona Diamondbacks brought the Venezuelan to Arizona six years ago, he said, and Garcia has been playing in the minor leagues ever since.

Nathan, 35, came under the H-B1 visa program, which allows employers to boost their work force with skilled foreign workers such as architects, engineers and computer programmers. The demand for the three-year visas, which are renewable once, routinely outpaces the number available. The current cap is 65,000, although in fiscal 2001, 2002 and 2003, it was temporarily raised to 195,000.

Garcia, 22, arrived under the H-2B visa program for foreign seasonal workers, which sparks high interest each year in the construction, health care, landscaping and hotel industries.

Last year, with the number of H-2B visas capped at 66,000, employers throughout the country lobbied Congress for additional temporary workers to keep their businesses afloat. The result was special legislation that for two years exempts returning seasonal workers from the annual cap and creates new anti-fraud provisions and reporting requirements.

A shortage of foreign laborers kept shut the Tucson frozen-fruit bar company of Irma Pedraza, who said she was unable to obtain any H-2B visas.

Pedraza, 70, for years has depended on Mexican temporary workers to sell the summer treats throughout certain neighborhoods. But the lack of laborers meant huge financial losses in Tucson and Phoenix, where she and her husband, Saúl, first opened La Moreliana.

"We had to take out loans to keep our business afloat," said Pedraza. As an employer of foreign laborers, she must be certified by the U.S. Labor Department and prove to the government that no U.S. citizens wants the job.

Mike Voisin, owner of Motivatit Seafoods in Houma, La., said the seasonal-worker program was key to reviving his business after the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The evacuation of local workers made him turn to the foreign laborers in his processing plant. "We can't get those people that have evacuated back as quickly as we'd like."

In early December, Voisin hired 16 residents of Mexico City and the state of Veracruz. He could have used more workers, he said, and plans to request additional visas once the employees end their job stint in November.

He plans on hiring more if local workers do not return.

Many farmers along the Southwestern border also have complained in recent months that a potential shortage of workers would hurt their winter harvest, but lobbying efforts for an emergency guest-worker program for the region have gone nowhere.

Timothy Chelling, a spokesman for the Western Growers Association, said the impact of the shortage won't be known until later, but he noted that it probably won't be as serious as initially feared.

Despite what farmers say is a dire need for temporary agricultural workers, few employers use the H-2A visa program to import temporary agricultural help. Chelling said farmers steer clear of it because the application process is costly and bureaucratic.

Bill Johnston, who is in charge of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Tucson, said the H-2A program can bring in an unlimited number of agricultural workers. But the guests must earn the same wages as U.S. workers, and there are meal, housing, transportation and insurance rules that may apply.

"If it is not a problem for employers to pay workers a decent wage, then there should be no problem in using the program," Johnson said.