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Cheap Labor Uber Alles - Ask most Americans what they consider the most pressing public policy concerns, and the list is likely to include homeland security, jobs, quality education, and runaway federal and state budget deficits. Look at the policy decisions of being made by the nation’s political leaders, and the inescapable conclusion is that their priority is cheap labor above all else. New data indicate that our government has dropped even the pretense of enforcing laws barring the employment of illegal aliens. In 2002, the federal government fined a grand total of 13 employers for failing to abide by statutes requiring them to verify the immigration status of their employees. Over the past six years, the number of illegal alien arrested at work sites dropped from 17,552, to just 451. In other words, the federal government has a sent an unmistakable message that it will do nothing to interfere with employers who wish to hire illegal aliens at low wages. Protecting business’ access to this form of cut-rate labor comes at the expense of every one of the issues most Americans care about, and most politicians purport to care about. But when forced to choose, the almost complete lack of immigration enforcement indicates that, for politicians, cheap labor interests trump all others. No one denies that unchecked illegal immigration poses a threat to homeland security. With 10 million or so illegal immigrants already living here, and an estimated 500,000 new ones settling each year, our ability to detect and apprehend terrorists is virtually nil. Yet, like Inspector Renault in Casablanca, who was shocked to discover that gambling was taking place in a backroom casino, the same politicians who have been protecting business’ access to illegal alien labor, were shocked to discover that we had also let in terrorists and demanded to know who was accountable. As we enter the 2004 political campaign there will be ample finger-pointing about who is responsible for the loss of some 3 million American jobs over the past three years. Meanwhile, millions of jobs in the United States are being filled by illegal aliens at degraded wages and working conditions, while the politicians who claim to feel the pain of American workers deliberately tie the hands of agencies charged with enforcing employer sanctions laws. The new school year has opened with the usual hand-wringing about lack of funds and overcrowded classrooms. It has also opened with an estimated 1.1 million illegal alien students in our nation’s public schools, at a conservatively estimated cost of $7.4 billion. Moreover, with the cost of higher education skyrocketing to a point where some middle class kids are being priced out of college education, a growing list of states are offering subsidized in-state tuition to illegal aliens, while Orrin Hatch, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has introduced legislation that would mandate that all state universities provide illegal aliens with taxpayer-subsidized educations. It is not by accident that the odds of winning the state lottery are better than the odds of getting busted for violating laws against hiring illegal aliens. The almost complete absence of workplace immigration enforcement is an expression of a deliberate choice that has been made by this country’s political leaders: Cheap labor uber alles. Satisfying the demands of cherished campaign contributors is more important to our elected leaders than protecting homeland security, protecting American workers, improving education, or balancing government budgets. No serious effort can be made to control illegal immigration without enforcing laws against the employment of illegal aliens. Access to jobs is what draws illegal aliens to this country by the millions. So long as employers can hire illegal aliens with impunity, and pass the social costs of millions of low-wage workers and their families along to the American taxpayers, illegal immigration will remain out of control. So long as illegal immigration remains out of control, promises that politicians make to the American public about protecting them, their jobs, their children and their wallets are nothing more than empty words. Enforcing our nation’s immigration laws must begin in the workplace. Only when employers begin to believe they might be caught and punished will the supply of jobs for illegal alien and the flow of illegal immigration begin to dry up. First, there needs to be a shift in the priorities of the politicians who control these policies. |
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