Ask your Hon. Rep. Feinstein why those very suggestions have been scuttled.

Or Shultz. Or Kissinger. Or

Low-skilled workers are increasingly scarce in the U.S. while they are still abundant in Mexico, Central America and elsewhere.

They were skilled corn farmers, among other things, until NAFTA trashed their livelihoods.

In fact we have plenty of low skilled workers: in public housing, in jails and prisons, in slums. I'm serious. We've have lots of low skilled labor because we don't develop and educate the poor. We trash the poor, then wink wink to the illegals who come in and dance on their economic grave.

This smarmy piece was excerpted in the WSJ because illegal immigration is a pro-business, pro Wall Street policy. That's why it exists. That's why companies hire illegals by the millions with token slaps on the wrist for penalties. Those folks sneer at paying taxes to develop and educate American citizens into productive workers, and illegals are "free" alright - free to be exploited and abused and poorly paid.

In any case, the fact that the fence is so expensive proves nothing. The fence is what the Wall Street folks want: it's so expensive it won't be built, but the huff and puff will distract voters from effective cheap policies: big fines for employers of illegals.

I know many Chinese people and Indians who have great jobs in the USA. They have jobs Americans want. Maybe they have the same effect on U.S. wages and the U.S. economy as the low-skill immigrants.

And our Captains of Industry want more of them. The same arguments seem to apply at the top of the job ladder and at the bottom. And, the same hypocrisy, if we believe the excellent previous post.

Concentrated benefits, distributed costs shell game. Benefits flow up, costs flow down.

"Their presence in the labor market increases competition for low-skilled jobs, reducing the earnings of low-skilled native-born workers. . . . Because of their low earnings, low-skilled immigrants also tend to pay less in taxes than they receive in public benefits, such as income transfers (e.g., the earned income tax credit, food stamps), public schooling for their children, and publicly provided medical services. Thus while the presence of low-skilled immigrant workers may raise the profits of their employers, they tend to have a negative effect on the well-being of the low-skilled native-born population, and on the native economy as a whole." University of Illinois economist Barry Chiswick in testimony before Congress

"What this is, is a huge redistribution of wealth away from workers who compete with immigrants to those who employ them." George J. Borjas, a professor of economics and social policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University

"For many unskilled American workers, immigration amounts to imported outsourcing." Harold Meyerson Washinton Post 17May06

>>[Robert E.] Rector asserted that the Senate’s immigration bill, which converts a low-skilled, uneducated population into legal citizens will cost taxpayers at least $50 billion per year in the coming decade

Rector said, “An unskilled illegal work force is a drain, but an unskilled legal workforce is a disaster.”

He explained that current welfare benefits are focused on providing assistance for a low-income, uneducated population with children, which largely resembles that of the illegal workforce. Rectors said giving illegal workers legal status will also give them constitutionally guaranteed access to those benefits.

Congressional Budget Office estimates that are being used to project immigration-related costs are faulty because the CBO is only authorized make economic forecasts 10 years into the future. Welfare benefit spending for newly legalized low-income workers won’t peak until at least a decade in the future.

"Maybe the smartest thing to do would be to take all the billions that are going to be spent on border control, and invest it in building roads and schools and other infrastructure in Mexico. A Marshall Plan for Mexico might seem unworkably utopian to some, but at least it would be a way forward built on hope, rather than exclusion."

It sure doesn't seem utopian to me. Can you imagine the goodwill that this plan would buy?