  The classic analysis of guest workers is Michael Walzer’s discussion of Western European countries’ former practice of hiring laborers from nearby states such as Turkey. This practice was a sensible solution for all, since it enabled a country like West Germany to hire foreign workers to do various relatively onerous jobs for considerably less than it would have had to pay its domestic labor force, and the imported laborers also profited, as they were able to earn considerably more than they could have in their own countries. Walzer objects to this practice, however, because these workers were not given equal political status in their host countries. Even when Turkish workers lived in West Germany with their families for many years, for instance, they would have no chance of acquiring German citizenship. For understandable reasons, Walzer is deeply troubled by the creation of this political underclass. As he puts it, “These guests experience the state as a pervasive and frightening power that shapes their lives and regulates their every move—and never asks for their opinion. Departure is only a formal option; deportation, a continuous practical threat. As a group, they constitute a disenfranchised class. They are typically exploited or oppressed as a class as well, and they are exploited or oppressed at least in part because they are disenfranchised, incapable of organizing effectively for self-defense.” (Walzer 1983: 59) As a consequence, Walzer insists that, while countries are perfectly within their rights to either hire or exclude foreign workers, they are not free to bring in outsiders without according them all the standard rights and privileges of equal citizenship. Thus, if a country is willing to embrace foreign workers as political equals, it may invite in as many as it would like. If a political community is unwilling to treat guest workers as equals, on the other hand, then it may not hire them and must pay the higher wages demanded by the domestic labor market.