Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, the highest-ranking member of the Catholic clergy in Brooklyn, has earned a reputation as a tireless advocate for illegal immigrants in his diocese.

Now, as policy-makers in Washington are pushing a plan that would issue millions of temporary visas to unskilled foreign workers, he is lobbying in his own way to help make the so-called guest worker proposal come to fruition.

“We have eight to 10 million undocumented immigrants here and we can’t deal with the issue,” he told The New York Sun yesterday morning. “We’ve got to break the logjam.”

As the American representative and lone clergy member on the Global Commission on International Migration, Rev. DiMarzio accompanied some of the world’s leading immigration experts to five countries to meet with politicians and civic leaders. The commission considered possible ways to deal with the record 20 million migrants around the world and presented a report to the U.N. secretary-general earlier this month.

With the debate over the nation’s borders heating up in Congress, Rev. DiMarzio is now applying the findings of the international study on migration reform to the national dialogue.

One of the surprising discoveries of the study, he said, is that temporary worker programs, such as the one President Bush first proposed two years ago, tend to benefit both the host country and guest workers when properly administrated.

“The world would benefit substantially from a well-regulated liberalization of the global labour market,” the report reads. While acknowledging the challenges of temporary worker programs – such as the risk of creating a second-class labor force, separation of families, and workers remaining in the host country – the report says they can help the financial and labor markets of rich and poor countries alike.

Two bills introduced this year in the Senate include temporary worker programs. Legislation from Senators Mc-Cain and Kennedy would allow illegal immigrants already in America and foreign temporary workers to apply for permanent legal status. Rev. Di-Marzio and the report support this type of program.

“It’s not just we use you, and then you go home again,” he said, explaining that the key to the concept is that temporary workers would have a chance of permanent status if they so desire. He said America could benefit both from the temporary labor and from those who decided to stay. Still, he warned, any immigration reform will be a difficult road. “There’s no silver bullet,” he said.

Earlier this month, the Brooklyn diocese began an educational campaign to inform clergy and community leaders how to articulate the need to provide legal status for undocumented immigrants. At the time, Rev. DiMarzio said the bishops “are united in the view that the present situation is unacceptable, and that comprehensive immigration reform is needed.” His next step, he said yesterday, is to bring the commission’s report to Congress.

The bishop may have traveled extensively to explore immigration problems from a global perspective, but he said he found he was already acquainted with most of them from his own diocese, which includes Brooklyn and Queens. More than half of the 1.8 million Catholics in the diocese are foreign-born, and a large proportion of them are living in New York illegally. To address their needs, one of the first actions Rev. DiMarzio took when he assumed the post of bishop two years ago was to create an immigration vicar. As one of nine vicars dealing with issues such as education and evangelization, the position ensures immigration remains at the forefront of his agenda.

“He’s out there on the big immigration picture, when the clergy are dealing with the smaller issues,” the diocese’s immigration vicar, Monsignor Ronald Marino, said. “It gives a lot of courage and strength to what we are doing.”