Yet another role for the Guard and Reserve

Neither side is entirely happy, so President Bush probably is doing the right thing when it comes to illegal immigrants.

Monday night, he called for a temporary guest-worker program for illegal immigrants that would allow them to eventually become U.S. citizens -- if they pay a fine, pay taxes, learn English and get a job.

He won't ship the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants out of the country, but Bush does plan to send 6,000 National Guard troops to help beef up the border. Gov. Dave Heineman doesn't expect the first call-up to include Nebraskans, but any long-term commitment is bound to include Cornhuskers.

While the troops will carry weapons, they won't be conducting patrols. Instead, they'll free up U.S. Border Patrol agents by helping out with duties like surveillance, analyzing intelligence and building patrol roads.

It's only the latest example of how much the United States has come to depend on its "citizen soldiers."

Since the draft was ended 30 years ago, the Guard and Reserve have slowly begun spending more and more time being "soldiers" and less and less time being just "citizens."

So much so, in fact, that the full-time military is nearly unable to function without the help of "part time" fighters.

As of May 10, more than 100,000 National Guard and Reserve troopers are on active duty with nearly 3,000 units.

About 1,000 of them are from Nebraska.

Now, a thousand people is a small number from a state like California or New York, but in Nebraska, pulling a young man or woman from a community leaves a gap that is hard to fill. Whether they work on the police force or volunteer fire department, hospital, factory or farm, these individuals are sorely missed while they're gone.

And, many of them have gone to Iraq or Afghanistan for two, three or more deployments.

So far, Nebraska has escaped any major natural or manmade disasters since the deployments to Southwest Asia began, but who knows when the next tornado outbreak or blizzard will occur?

And, as Sen. Ben Nelson has pointed out, most equipment that does to Iraq with the troops doesn't come back. So far, he said, Nebraska is short some 1,700 pieces of equipment such as Humvees, trucks and radios.

Yes, using the National Guard to help secure our southern border might be the right thing to do right now.

And, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan demand participation of the part-time military.

But the Guard and Reserve are an insurance policy that is having too many claims filed against it.

Over the long term, our leaders need to do everything they can to keep the troops at home.