Do you think part of the illegal immigration problem, is that our own companies keep hiring the illegals?

[JD]

The reality is
that we don't have an "Illegal Immigration" problem in America.

We have an "Illegal Employer" problem.

Yet it's almost never mentioned in the mainstream media,
because to point it out
could slightly reduce the profits and CEO salaries
of many of America's largest multi-state
and multinational corporations -
who both own the media
and contribute heavily to conservative politicians.

Encouraging a rapid increase in the workforce
by encouraging companies to hire non-citizens
is one of the three most potent tools
conservatives since Ronald Reagan have used
to convert the American middle class
into the American working poor.
(The other two are
destroying the governmental protections
that keep labor unions viable,
and
ending tariffs while promoting trade deals
like NAFTA / WTO/ GATT that export manufacturing jobs.)

For example,
when Nike began manufacturing shoes
in Third World countries with labor costs below US labor costs,
it didn't lead to $15 Nikes -
their price held,
and even increased,
because the market would bear it.
Instead, that reduction in labor costs
led to Nike CEO Phil Knight becoming a multi-billionaire

The fact is
that we have had an open border with Mexico
for several centuries,
and "illegal immigration" was never a serious problem.

Before Reagan's presidency,
an estimated million or so people a year
came into the US from Mexico -
and the same number, more or less, left the US for Mexico
at the end of the agricultural harvest season.
Very few stayed, because there weren't jobs for them.

Non-citizens didn't have access
to the non-agricultural US job market,
in large part because of the power of US labor unions
(before Reagan 25% of the workforce was unionized;
today the private workforce is about 7% unionized),
and because companies were unwilling to risk
having non-tax-deductible labor expenses on their books
by hiring undocumented workers
without valid Social Security numbers.

But Reagan put an end to that.
His 1986 amnesty program,
combined with his aggressive war on organized labor
(begun in 1981),
in effect told both employers and non-citizens
that there would be few penalties
and many rewards to increasing the US labor pool
(and thus driving down wages)
with undocumented immigrants.

A million people a year
continued to come across our southern border,
but they stopped returning to Latin America every fall
because instead of seasonal work
they were able to find permanent jobs.

The magnet drawing them? Illegal Employers.

Our borders have always been porous
but we've never had a problem like this before.

And it's not just because poverty has increased in Mexico -

Today, about half of Mexico lives on less than $2 a day,
but 50 years ago
half of Mexico also lived on the equivalent of $2 today.

Yet fifty years ago
we didn't have an "illegal immigration" problem,
because back then
we didn't have a conservative "Illegal Employer" problem.

As the Washington Post noted
in an article by Hsu and Lydersen on June 19, 2006 :

"Between 1999 and 2003,
work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent
by the Immigration and Naturalization Service,
which subsequently was merged
into the Homeland Security Department.
The number of employers prosecuted
for unlawfully employing ILLEGAL ALIENS
dropped from 182 in 1999
to four in 2003,
and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000,
according to federal statistics."
"In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies.
In 2004, it issued fine notices to three."

The hiring crimes of Illegal Employers
are being ignored by the law,
and rewarded by the economic systems of the nation.

Proof that this simple reality is ignored in our media
(much to the delight of Republicans)
is everywhere you look.

Illegal Immigration" is really about "Illegal Employers."
As long as Democrats argue it
on the basis of "illegal immigration"
they'll lose, even when they're right.
Instead, they need to be talking about "Illegal Employers.

Politically, it's not a civil rights issue,
it's a jobs issue,
as working Americans keep telling pollsters over and over again.

Start penalizing "Illegal Employers"
and non-citizens without a Social Security number
will leave the country on their own.

And they won't have to confront death
trying to cross the desert back into Mexico -
Mexican citizens can simply walk back into Mexico
across the border at any legal border crossing
as about a million did every year for over a century).

Easy, simple, cheap, painless.

No fence required.
No mass deportations necessary.
No need for Homeland Security to get involved.

When jobs are not available,
most undocumented workers will simply leave the country
(as they always did before),
or begin the normal process to obtain citizenship
that millions go through each year.

Republicans, however,
are not going to allow a discussion of "Illegal Employers."

Instead,
they will continue to hammer the issue of "Illegal Immigrants,"
and tie that political albatross around the necks of Democrats
(who seem all too willing to accept it).

Many Republicans,
looking for any silver lining in an abundance of dark clouds,
think the immigration issue might be a silver bullet
that will slay their current vulnerability.
The issue is, as political people say, a 'two-fer.'
Opposition to the Senate bill,
and support for the House bill,
puts Republican candidates
where much of the country
and most of their party's base currently is
-- approximately: 'Fix the border;
then maybe we can talk about other things.'
And opposition to the Senate bill
distances them from a president who,
although rebounding recently,
has approval ratings below 40 percent in 29 states.

Now even Bush
is talking like the Republicans in the House of Representatives -
time to "get tough"
and give Halliburton a few billion to build a fence.

But still nobody is talking about the real problem here
- The Illegal Employers.