The US policy on immigration is remarkable in that it contains within it contradictions. On one hand the United States spends increasing amounts of money trying to stop people from illegally crossing the border. On the other hand, US businesses and many people individually make use of cheap illegal immigrant labor (e.g., that gardening company that mows your lawn, ever check if all of their workers are legal? I thought not).

If you believe tht illegal immigrant labor is forcing down wages in the United States (which I do) then you should support a policy of cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants. Large fines or even jail time for the executives who run meat packing plants, fast food companies, large retail chains and construction companies will rapidly dry up illegal immigration since there will be many fewer jobs for undocumented workers.

This means that it may cost more to get that fast food burger or to buy the meat that is processed by the meat packing plant. But it also means that we might see more economic expansion as people have more money to spend. But the economic expansion will not come overnight. In the mean time you're going to pay a little more for lots of things.

Really stopping illegal immigration is exactly what the Republicans and their big business backers don't want. They want cheap labor, lower labor costs and less workplace rights. This is why the problem continues to exist.

As an American-born software engineer, I don't mind hiring talent from overseas; finding competent engineers is difficult even with a whole planet to search. I just want the competition for jobs to be fair, and that means that employers shouldn't be able to depend on people working for cheap as long as they can be tantalized with a green card that never appears, or working long hours because they're worried about being sent back overseas if they don't burn the candle at both ends, or creating job descriptions that have requirements that only a foreign-born employee can fulfill but aren't actually needed for the job. When the rights of H-1B employees improve, my job security improves.

Leonard says "Given the expense and doubtful effectiveness of border walls and employer crackdowns, progressive tax and social policies seem preferable."

But employer crackdown IS a social policy, and one yet to be tried.

A Progressive position on the immigration problem recognizes that a strong labor movement and employer crackdown would --- in the long term -- reverse the longterm trend of illegal immigration. In the decades before Reagan's ascendancy, when there was a strong labor movement, illegal immigration was nothing like the problem it is now.

Even Caesar Chavez, the California farmworker organizer, understood the class warfare aspect of illegal immigration and for that reason opposed it.

In a nutshell: That immigration is deemed relevant in these days of outsourcing must surely be a product of mental decay. Jobs are moving around the world beyond the capacity for people to move. If jobs are going to move around like this in the future, governments need to support mass migration in a massive way... or we should cut out this outsourcing and cheap labor overseas nonsense altogether. The obsession over punishing immigrants for a greater globalization problem is the biggest smokescreen the fear-mongering American government has created yet. And you're still buying it! How pathetic.

PS: A-Bear, if you're gonna have a website offering your own brand of software, you can at least hire professional web designers at home to do the job right, not cheap labor. You get what you pay for and it's hypocritical considering your post.

One pundit suggests that the immigration debate will set off a wave of right-wing backlash, what's that mean, the 35% of the American public who still support Bush will continue to wave his banner? Of course Bush has been more than conciliatory on the immigration issue, leaving the (backstabbing) Congress to fend for themselves. (I say Hello, You say Dubai). The Republican party is coming apart on the immigration issue, can the Democrats come together?

Here again we have a demo of what a corporatocracy our govt has become.

I personally believe we should have a good path to citizenship for non-illegal immigrants, and policies that discourage the illegal variety. And judging from these letters, voters overwhelmingly lean in that direction. But the only feasible path to discouraging illegals is heavy fines for employers, and never ever will our corporatocracy allow that.

So instead we have the spectacle and debacle of Rethuglicans proposing to criminalize the poor. Is anyone surprised?

As Congress adds illegal immigrants to the list of allowable law-breakers (which includes themselves), workers of America are forced to provide housing and healthcare which they, themselves, cannot afford. Another taxpayer subsidy to business in the form of slave-wages for immigrants by Republicans while Democrats use their do-gooder approach without a clue how it hurts the working class. Maybe their is a job in my future as a whip-cracker.

Here’s something loopy. Mr. Leonard derides Jennifer Morse, then proves her point a few paragraphs below.

“Or even worse, they are being imported to serve a left-wing welfare-state agenda! The loopiest analysis yet of illegal immigration comes from one Jennifer Roback Morse, on the Web site Town Hall.”

But then he asks, “What to do about illegal immigration?” and his answer is “increase welfare.”

“progressive taxation, larger public investments designed to prevent poor kids from dropping out of high school, or some other policy tool.”

(which sounds like an expansion of the welfare state to me, RF)

So he calls Jennifer Morse’s analysis “loopy” then by his own words, he recommends exactly what she warns against, proving her right!

Anybody else catch this?

I keep hearing the argument that it is important to increase the limit of H-1 visas since qualified applicants are not available. I don't know where you are looking but I have over 22 years of qualified experience and plenty of interest in my talents but no luck in finding a different position. The real issue is employers are only willing to pay half my current salary since they know they can fill the position with an H-1 visa holder for the employers' terms. Please spare us your pretentious generosity as we all know your salary and benefits would be $.05/hour if you could get away with it.