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Dear Innisfree,

"No. They have access to the social safety net that their taxes provide legally: medicaid, unemployment, disability etc."

Speaking strictly about health benefits, anyone, illegal alien or not, who shows up with an acute emergency medical problem at a hospital will be treated. Uninsured people in the US, legal and illegal, often receive medial care superior to that available in much of the world.

As for unemployment insurance and disability insurance, the absence of these hardly constitutes reducing the worker to the level of slave labor. Unless you're supposing that wage earners generally were all slaves before the institution of unemployment insurance and Social Security disability coverage.

"...it's not by any reasonable definition a living wage."

Whether $10 per hour with or without these benefits is your definition of a living wage or not, if one does not pay a living wage, one has nevertheless not reduced the worker to "slave labor."

Or are folks at McDonalds, working at under $6 per hour, reduced to "slave labor"? Since the 13th Amendment forbids slavery, but the federal government countenances a wage of less than $6 per hour, it seems reasonable that the payment of wages of a little less than $6 per hour doesn't constitute reducing someone to "slave labor." There are those who would disagree, but I believe that they would be found at Democrat Underground, not here.

Thus, the question is then whether these marginal benefits are worth much more than $4 per hour.

Certainly, the monetary value of unemployment insurance doesn't amount to more than $4 per hour.

Since to qualify for unemployment benefits, one must work for the employer for six months, the individual would be able to save $4+ per hour for roughly 1000 hours. That would amount to more than $4,000. In the state of Maryland, the maximum unemployment benefit is usually $280 per week for up to 13 weeks. That works out to $3640. Thus, even in the worst case, the individual paid $10 per hour could provide self-insurance for unemployment as well as the state unemployment insurance system provides here in Maryland (where I know folks who have hired illegal aliens as nannies for $10 per hour).

Thus, at $10 per hour, the employer is paying the worker enough to actually self-insure against loss of income due to unemployment.

As to disability, access to disability is determined by eligibility to participate in the Social Security system. That is governed, in cases like these, by immigration status, not by whether the employer pays over the table and pays taxes, or under the table, and pays none. Even if the worker were to provide a false Social Security number, and faked identification, to fool the employer into thinking he was hiring someone legally, and even if the employer then paid the requisite taxes, should the illegal worker become disabled, she would have no access to disability benefits.

Lack of disability coverage is not tied to the employer's practice, but to the worker's legal status. Thus, even if you wish to make the stretch that lack of disability benefits constitutes being reduced to "slave labor," that is not by the action of the employer, but the worker.

"It's taking advantage of illegals' inability to qualify for decent wages and benefits due to an American citizen. What do you call it?"

I agree, though, that knowingly hiring illegal aliens,and paying them under the table, is taking advantage of them. But I don't call it slavery. Slavery was and is a bit more serious than this.

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