Agreed but it takes a lot more than just hitting a couple of high profile companies (e.g., Walmart). And people have to be willing to suck up the higher prices... starting with landscaping, construction, hotel/motel rates, dinners on the town, the cost of clean rest rooms, etc, etc. This all takes time and considering the economy that Bush inherited is there any wonder that he didn't immediately decide to further encumber business by forcing them to pay higher wages to legals? If anyone is serious about addressing this problem they have to have the patience to see it through and "complete the mission" and not fall prey to cheap one-liners about shipping them all back.
Actually, an honest review of the situation shows most legal immigrants of Hispanic descent overwhelmingly support making "immigrants" doing it the legal way.
So "these companies'" officers are thus, then, not "legal residents?"
Not -ALL- of our legal residents are opposed to illegal immigration. Who are the people that are paying for cheap "headless chickens, landscaping and construction." They may not endorse it, but there's a lot of little old ladies and heartland families that tacitly accept the fruits of illegals.....and I venture to say they're unfortunately not a minority.
Anyway, Don't get so anti-corporation just because it's faceless and easy to hate personless persons....there's real people that you should direct your anger at.
"the real driver are the corporate political contributions from those who benefit from cheap illegal labor."
Pure liberal, union B.S.
The companies hiring illegal immigrants are small. Large companies are too big of targets for enforcement. They are run by greedy people who hire relatively small numbers of illegal workers to exploit.
They aren't the kinds of people who make significant campaign contributions.
If they are making campaign contributions, the amounts of money are dwarfed by the fast sums of union money being dumped into political campaigns.
Unions dump vast sums of money into politics and then say that it's the big bad corporations that are scewing politics with money, when it corporations are in most cases not donating anywhere near the kinds of money the unions are.
The numbers just don't support your accusations.
However, if you look at our low unemployment figures, and look at estimations on how many illegal immigrants are currently working in the US, it's pretty obvious that there are more jobs than legal workers in the US.
It doesn't take much of an economist to figure out that if you were able to effectively enforce immigration law, there's be a considerable number of businesses simply unable to find workers.
A slightly tight labor marker is nice for workers. I like having job security as well as mobility, however if the market gets too tight, the economy cannot grow. At the same time the thght labor market drives up wages. That sounds nice until you realize that it's going to also drive up inflation, and inflation in a shrinking economy quickly leader to recession and then depression.
We need strong immigration enforcement, but we also need sufficient legal immigration.
I think it's really the corporate donors and the Latino vote is just an excuse. I can't imagine that the majority of Latinos, who immigrated legally, love all the illegals too.
"the real driver are the corporate political contributions from those who benefit from cheap illegal labor. It is these companies and their officers who should be investigated, fined, and convicted, and jailed."
Hear, hear.
Most of these immigrants, legal or illegal, come for JOBS. If employers stopped giving them jobs, I really do believe that the flow of immigration would be substantially slowed. It wouldn't end, but it would be much less of a problem. In CA during the recession of the 1990s when the job market dried up immigration also slacked off.
There are always some illegal immigrants who come thinking they'll get on welfare (or moms who come so their kids will be born US citizens) but mostly they come for the jobs. And don't kid yourself -- these people work darn hard. They are probably closer to the kind of hard-working, striving people our immigrant ancestors were than most native born Americans are.