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Bamagirl is suggesting a strategy that would not involve hiring illegals but that would allow all legal participants to capture a valuable business opportunity. It's a constructive suggestion since turning problems into opportunities is how businesses succeed. It would also require strict enforcement as you suggest, because it would be more expensive for contractors to hire through HomeDepot than it would be to hire from the new pool of illegals that would develop a couple blocks down the street.

At the end of the day - the illegals need to be stopped at the border or we will never get around this problem. "Jobs that Americans wont take ..." is a bunch of crap. There will always be destitute people in the world who are willing to work for just enough money to buy a days food. Until the standard of living in the US drops to those destitute levels there will always be a market for desperate, foreign laborers. The kinds of jobs my family did when they first came to this country are no longer available to my children because it is the equivalent of sending them back to the sweat shops. Those conditions exist because we have allowed desperate labor to enter the country. The prices of houses and labor services have now declined to reflect production costs that can only be sustained with government subsidies (mandated emergency room care for illegals, mandated public education for illegals ...). Flooding the country with these people is going to create more problems than it solves.

Thanks cdrw, you said it better than I did. Hopefully not as much enforcement would be required, because the Home Depot worked would be properly trained, bonded, screened for a criminal background, etc., making their work pool more desireable than the gang hanging down the street.

I think your analysis of "desperate labor" is quite insightful. Thanks for the analysis!

What do you think is the key difference between immigrants of a century ago and today? The massive government subsidies that keep them from really trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? I think it is that, and a lack of desire to want to assimilate. (Although I've read that Italians had this problem as well.)