[staytrue]

When you work, you create value. If someone gets paid 5 dollars, he has done at least 5 dollars worth of value or else no one would pay him.

[JCEccles]

They need to stay in their own country and create value.

[Dead Dog]

However, if they are payed by a gov. subsidised farmer to grow crops at an artificially high price, are they creating net value?

[antisocial]

"When you work, you create value. If someone gets paid 5 dollars, he has done at least 5 dollars worth of value or else no one would pay him."

True, but very little of the value stays in our economy if it is sent to Mexico.

[CowboyJay]

"If someone gets paid 5 dollars, he has done at least 5 dollars worth of value or else no one would pay him." We're paying much more as a country than that $5.00 per hour. We're currently paying out $2,700/yr in entitlement costs for every illegal alien in the state of Colorado (this does not include secondary costs such as education for anchor-babies, or unpaid medical bills). The estimates I've seen is that these payments would nearly triple once the GW program is put in place.

We also highly subsidize some of the industries that employ the most illegals.

Cheap labor? Only for the CRIMINALS who directly employ them. They're bleeding the rest of us taxpaying, law-abiding citizens dry. We have a glut of uneducated and unskilled labor in this country, not a shortage. That's why wages are going down below legal minimums.

[CowboyJay]

"When you work, you create value. If someone gets paid 5 dollars, he has done at least 5 dollars worth of value or else no one would pay him."

The point of my previous post is that we're likely subsidizing that supposed $5 of value created to the point of a net loss. At best, it's a very poor ROI, and we'd be better served by extending further tax cuts to private citizens to stimulate consumer demand, or building infrastructure and R&D capability with that money.

We're importing social problems and poverty. The effect of this policy has already played itself out in Europe. We have empirical data to suggest that it serves no purpose for developed nations to continue importing unskilled and uneducated workers.