A conservative Texas congressman came out in favor of a guest-worker program this weekend, and now he's facing the wrath of anti-immigration groups who say he's promoting what amounts to amnesty.

Representative Ted Poe (R-Texas) said in an opinion piece for Politico that his party was "silent" on the immigration debate during election season and called for Republicans to support several specific immigration proposals.

"Tangled up in embarrassing statements about rape and abortion and notably silent on immigration," Poe wrote, "the electorate chose what they knew over what they perceived incorrectly as closed-minded and out of touch."

He noted that Democrats and Republicans can agree that undocumented immigrants who commit violent crimes be returned to their home countries.

But he followed that statement with a policy stance that drew immediate fire fromTed Poe and others like him out of office and replace them with real Americans who will stand up for our citizens, the Rule of Law, and the US Constitution instead of caving in to the globalist controlled media."

The guest-worker program is not a new idea. It was part of both the Texas and national GOP platforms. Brad Bailey, one of the author's of the Texas platform's immigration language and a vocal supporter of including the idea in the national platform, said in an interview with ABC/Univision News that groups such as ALIPAC have "hijacked" the party.

"These groups are not conservative in the least bit and somehow they've infiltrated the party," he said. "Enforcement-only legislation is what they push for, but that doesn't address the whole problem."

Bailey supports