When you hear about the highly publicized raids on employers who hire illegal immigrants, you think…ahhh, the government is finally doing something about it. But what are they really doing? When you consider that there could be as many as 20 million illegal immigrants making up the “underground labor force”, how could we possibly make a dent in this? With 1,200 arrested over a 10 month investigation — at this rate, it would be the next century before we could round up all the undocumented workers.

The only way to stop this avalanche of illegals is to eliminate the reason that they come here in the first place — jobs. As reported in the September, ‘06, New York Times, The United Farm Workers estimated that 90 percent of California’s farmworkers are undocumented. On some construction sites in Seattle, 90 percent of the workers are native Spanish speakers. And, the Department of Labor figures that about 85 percent of recent immigrants from Mexico are undocumented. Robert Justich, in his 2005 paper “The Underground Labor Force Is Rising to the Surface”, estimates that as many as 3 million people enter the country illegally each year which is triple the “official” estimate and hold somewhere between 12 million and 15 million jobs. The reason is simple — cheap labor. In some instances, its outright borderline slavery. Employers want cheap labor and Mexican workers want jobs — at any cost. And that cost is on the backs of illegal immigrants in the form of human bondage.

Reported in the April, ‘07, Utne magazine, Max Gonzales, an undocumented worker lived in a canvas tent in the isolated mountains of northern New Mexico tending sheep for a rich rancher. He was paid $4,500 a year. He has a wife and three daughters back in Guanajuato, Mexico. The rancher says he “can’t afford” to pay what the job is really worth which would be twice what Max was getting because if he did, he couldn’t compete in the market. Many other workers are laboring under the same condition — living in cinderblock hovels hidden away behind the sand hills of southern New Mexico, making less than minimum wage, suffering inhumane working conditions due to fear of deportation. There are farm shacks, decrepit trailer parks, and urban tenements packed with people who work long hours in illegal and unsafe working conditions in extreme weather handling toxic chemicals and dangerous heavy equipment.

Economically speaking, these laborers are serving the same purpose that African slaves served before the Civil War. Slaves were also considered a vital component of the plantation economy for which landowners likewise rallied against change due to the “inability to compete” without their slaves. It established for America at the time, dominance in the international marketplace. Today, the marketplace is much the same — from the roof on your house, to the food on your table, these jobs are done by undocumented workers. All of whom their employers will say that they can’t make it without them and go right on hiring them for less pay, with less benefits and unsafe working conditions.

But we are just as guilty as the employers by allowing this human bondage to happen just as it did in the plantation days. We look the other way and complain under our breath about these “damn illegals”. In the meantime, they continue to swarm into this country and continue to buttress this illegal and immoral slave economy. But, here is the conundrum. If we acknowledge that these workers deserve the same pay, benefits and working conditions as other workers, we would have to accept the consequences of doing so. This would mean that the cost of doing business would increase as much as 10 to 15 percent.

However, I think at some point as these problems continue to exponentially expand into other areas such as over population and increasing demand on resources, we will come face to face with not only our moral dilemma, but our natural resource dilemma. At that time, we will be forced to bite the bullet to solve this problem. Yes, our economy will suffer a setback but we have endured worse conditions in the past, but if we, as Americans, stand for anything, we must do something now before we get to that breaking point. We can do this by enforcing the laws that we do have by requiring employers to verify documents with enforceable, legal oversight, and heavily fine those who don’t comply. We have to make hiring undocumented workers more expensive than not hiring them. The consequences have to be real and unavoidable. We have to take away the sole reason people illegally cross the border — jobs. It’s as simple as that.

But no politician wants to take the heat for such legislation because it would cause negative ripples in the economy and an unfavorable public reaction. Since they are more worried about getting re-elected than standing up and taking a risk, we will end up doing nothing. This is truly a no win situation. It’s sad to say that our politicians got us into this mess, and they are the ones who will have to get us out. My question is, who has the guts to do it?